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Russia intensifies assault, warns U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine are 'legitimate targets'
[LA Times] Russian forces kept up their bombardment of cities across Ukraine on Saturday, capturing the eastern outskirts of a key southern port and waging an increasingly violent campaign with an eye to encircling the capital even as they sought to bring a political veneer to their occupation in cities they have captured.The moves come as the White House announced it would send an additional $200 million in arms and equipment for Ukraine. That announcement came hours Moscow signaled it could soon expand the war to embroil Kyiv's allies, warning the U.S. that it would consider convoys carrying weapons to Ukraine to be "legitimate targets." While wide-scale Russian bombing campaigns intensified in cities including Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv, Russian forces plan to conduct a referendum that would turn the city of Kherson — the first major city captured by Russian forces earlier this month — into a vassal breakaway republic, said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. "Given zero popular support, it will be fully staged," he wrote on Twitter, warning that it was a repeat of Russia's playbook in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists held a referendum that led to the creation of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics in eastern Ukraine. "Severe sanctions against Russia must follow if they proceed. Kherson is & will always be Ukraine." Sergey Khlan, a deputy in the Kherson Regional Council, said in a post on Facebook on Saturday that Russian authorities were contacting deputies and asking for their cooperation in holding the referendum to create a putative Kherson People's Republic. "The creation of Kherson People’s Republic will turn our region into a hopeless hole without life and future," Khlan wrote. "Do not give them a single vote! Do not give them any opportunity to legitimize [the Kherson People’s Republic]... Enter the history of Ukraine not as traitors whom nobody wants, but truly as citizens whose names will be remembered by the next generations." Meanwhile, in Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Saturday that shipments of Western weapons to Ukraine could be attacked by Russian forces, according to Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency. Western nations’ "thoughtless transfer" of portable air defense and antitank missile systems to Kyiv, Ryabkov said, demonstrated "the escalatory component of Washington’s policy." The White House announced Saturday it approved an additional $200 million in arms and equipment for Ukraine, on top of $350 million President Biden approved last month. "We have warned the U.S. that the U.S.-orchestrated inundation of Ukraine with weapons from some countries is not just a dangerous move, but also an action that makes these convoys legitimate targets," Ryabkov said. The Russian diplomat did not say whether Russian forces would target such convoys in Poland or Romania, NATO countries that border Ukraine. The tough talk came on a day that Russian forces sustained "heavy losses in manpower and equipment" in areas northeast of Kyiv and were prevented from regaining a foothold on previously captured frontiers, according to the Ukrainian military.
Posted by: Besoeker 2022-03-13 |
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