![]() The Kremlin says it is up to people living there to decide their own futures. ![]() Pavlovsk, a suburb of Saint Petersburg, Russia, September 14, 2017. Immature northern honey mushrooms ( Armillaria borealis) together with sheathed woodtuft mushrooms (Kuehneromyces mutabilis) on a stump in roadside bushes in Pavlovsk Park. Russian-imposed officials in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia have outlined plans to hold plebiscites in the coming months. Krugovaya Ulitsa, 25, Tyarlevo, Sankt-Peterburg, Russia, 196625. ![]() Lavrov spoke a day after the White House said Russia was starting to roll out a plan to annex large parts of southern Ukraine under the cover of "sham referendums". In the past few weeks it has ramped up missile strikes on cities across Ukraine. Nearly four months later, it has taken Luhansk, one of two provinces that comprise the Donbas, but remains far from capturing all of the other, Donetsk. Russia could not allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy "or whoever replaces him" to threaten its territory or that of the DPR and LPR with the longer-range systems, he said - referring casually, and without any evidence, to the possibility that the Ukrainian leader might not remain in power.Īfter failing to take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv at the start of the war, Russia said in March it would focus on "achieving the main goal, the liberation of Donbas". "That means the geographical tasks will extend still further from the current line," he said. Lavrov said Russia might need to push even deeper if the West, out of "impotent rage" or desire to aggravate the situation further, kept pumping Ukraine with long-range weapons such as the U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS). ![]() Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba responded: "By confessing dreams to grab more Ukrainian land, (the) Russian foreign minister proves that Russia rejects diplomacy and focuses on war and terror. "This process is continuing logically and persistently." "Now the geography is different, it's far from being just the DPR and LPR, it's also Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and a number of other territories," he said, referring to areas well beyond the Donbas that Russia has wholly or partly seized. But Lavrov said geographical realities had changed since Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held peace talks in Turkey in late March that failed to produce any breakthrough.Īt that time, he said, the focus was on the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR), self-styled breakaway entities in eastern Ukraine from which Russia has said it aims to drive out Ukrainian government forces. ![]()
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