US envoy: Russia aims to wipe Ukraine off map

UNITED NATIONS: United States Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Friday (Saturday in Manila) that there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intended to dismantle Ukraine "and dissolve it from the world map entirely."

She told the UN Security Council that the US was seeing growing signs that Russia was laying the groundwork to attempt to annex all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, including by installing "illegitimate proxy officials in Russian-held areas, with the goal of holding sham referenda or decree to join Russia."