Kyiv accuses Moscow of wanting a partition of Ukraine, Zelensky demands more weapons from the West, corridors requested to evacuate civilians from Mariupol…: update on the situation in Ukraine this Sunday, March 27.
The essentials to remember this Sunday, March 27
- Ukraine’s intelligence chief promises ‘all-out’ war
- Ukrainian president asks for more military equipment
- Biden says Putin ‘can’t stay in power’
- The separatist region of Luhansk evokes a possible referendum
- Russian-Ukrainian agreement for two humanitarian corridors in Mariupol
President Zelensky demands more weapons from the West
“Russia wants to divide Ukraine in two, as happened with North Korea and South Korea,” Kirilo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, said on Sunday, promising an “all-out” war to avoid such a scenario. Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, for his part, urged the West to provide his country with tanks, planes and missiles to help him fend off Russian forces, which the Kyiv government says are increasingly targeting the fuel and food depots.
Putin a “butcher”: the American government tempers
While US President Joe Biden on Saturday called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a “butcher”, further believing that the latter “could not stay in power”, US officials have since been working to moderate these remarks. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had no regime change strategy in Moscow and that Joe Biden had simply meant that Vladimir Putin had no right to declare war on Ukraine or Russia. other countries.
Macron wants to avoid escalation
Emmanuel Macron, for his part, said on Sunday that he would not use the same words as Joe Biden to refer to the Russian president. “We want to stop the war that Russia has launched in Ukraine without waging war and without escalating, that’s the goal,” said the French president.
More than a month after the invasion of Ukraine, presented by Moscow as a “special operation”, Russia seems to have lowered its ambitions and indicated on Friday that it wanted to focus on a complete “liberation” of the eastern Ukrainian region from the Donbass, where pro-Russian separatists have been fighting Ukrainian troops for eight years.
Possible referendum in Luhansk?
In this part of Ukraine, a leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic said on Sunday that the region could soon hold a referendum to join Russia, as in Crimea after the territory was annexed by Moscow in 2014. The people of Crimea then voted overwhelmingly in favor of a break with Ukraine, but this consultation was not recognized by a large part of the international community.
“In fact, it is an attempt to create North Korea and South Korea in Ukraine“Said Kirilo Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, quoted in a statement, referring to the partition of Korea after the Second World War. Kirilo Budanov, however, assured that the Ukrainian army would be able to repel the troops “The beginning of an all-out war on the part of the Ukrainians will soon begin. Then the Russians will be left with one option: how to survive,” he said.
Ukraine also considered that the organization by Russia of a referendum in Luhansk would have no legal basis and would call for a strong response from the international community. “All fake referendums in the temporarily occupied territories are null and void and will have no legal validity,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko told Reuters. “Instead, Russia will face an even stronger response from the international community, further deepening its global isolation.”
Humanitarian Corridors in Mariupol
On the military front, Russian high-precision cruise missiles targeted military targets in Lviv, western Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday. On the diplomatic side, a Ukrainian negotiator said the two sides would take part in talks this week in Turkey, but the Ukrainian president warned that an agreement with Moscow would only be possible if Russia withdraws its troops.
Since the start of the conflict, at least 1,119 civilians have been killed and 1,790 injured, the UN human rights office said. Pope Francis, for his part, judged that the threat of a world conflict linked to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia should convince that the time had come for humanity to abolish war before it does not abolish humanity.
Ukraine and Russia agreed on Sunday to set up two “humanitarian corridors” to evacuate civilians from frontline areas, including allowing them to drive out of the besieged city of Mariupol, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk said. While Emmanuel Macron on Friday proposed an “exceptional humanitarian operation” in connection with Turkey and Greece in Mariupol, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned on Sunday that it would be “collective guilt” if nothing was being done to help the civilians in the besieged city.
