{"id":18925,"date":"2022-03-27T18:11:05","date_gmt":"2022-03-27T18:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=18925"},"modified":"2022-03-27T18:11:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-27T18:11:05","slug":"putin-wants-korean-scenario-for-ukraine-says-intelligence-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/03\/27\/putin-wants-korean-scenario-for-ukraine-says-intelligence-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin wants \u2018Korean scenario\u2019 for Ukraine, says intelligence chief"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"maincontent\" class=\"dcr-j7ihvk\">\n<div class=\"article-body-commercial-selector article-body-viewer-selector  dcr-ucgxn1\">\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Vladimir Putin is seeking to split Ukraine into two, emulating the postwar division between North and South Korea, the invaded country\u2019s military intelligence chief has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">In comments that raise the prospect of a long and bitter frozen conflict, Gen Kyrylo Budanov, who foretold of Russia\u2019s invasion as far back as November, warned of bloody guerrilla warfare.<\/p>\n<div id=\"sign-in-gate\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">The prediction came as Leonid Pasechnik, the leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People\u2019s Republic in eastern\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/ukraine\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Ukraine<\/a>, said: \u201cI think that in the near future a referendum will be held on the territory of the republic, during which the people will \u2026 express their opinion on joining the Russian Federation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Budanov said he believed Putin had rethought his plan for full occupation since failing to swiftly take Ukraine\u2019s capital, Kyiv, and overthrow Volodymyr Zelenskiy\u2019s government. \u201cIt is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,\u201d he said of the new Kremlin strategy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Officials in Kyiv said they expected troops attacking the capital and the embattled city of Kharkiv to move east within two weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">In other developments:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">\n<li>The French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for calmer language as he distanced himself from Joe Biden\u2019s speech in Poland on Saturday in which the US president called for Putin to be removed from power.<\/li>\n<li>The Kremlin said it was \u201cnot up to the president of the US and not up to the Americans to decide who will remain in power in Russia,\u201d as US officials sought to backtrack on Biden\u2019s comments.<\/li>\n<li>Vadym Denysenko, a Ukrainian interior ministry adviser, said Russia was trying to destroy Ukrainian fuel and food storage depots, as firefighters battled for 13 hours to put out a blaze in the western city of Lviv after multiple missile attacks on Saturday night.<\/li>\n<li>Zelenskiy urged the west to hand over military hardware that was \u201cgathering dust\u201d in stockpiles, saying his country needed just 1% of Nato\u2019s aircraft and 1% of its tanks. \u201cWe\u2019ve already been waiting 31 days,\u201d he said. \u201cWho\u2019s in charge of the Euro-Atlantic community? Is it really still Moscow, because of intimidation?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Ukraine enjoyed its most significant counteroffensive success so far as it retook the city of Trostyanets, unblocking a resupply road from the besieged regional capital, Sumy, to Poltava.<\/li>\n<li>The United Nations human rights office said at least 1,119 civilians had been killed and 1,790 wounded in the war, with 15 girls and 32 boys, as well as 52 children whose sex was as yet unknown, among the dead. The true figures were likely to be considerably higher, the UN said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Western officials are determined to prevent Putin from normalising a division in Ukraine. Korea was divided along the 38th parallel north from 1945 until 1950, and has been divided since 1953 along the military demarcation line.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Shortly before the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia\u2019s president recognised the two eastern self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk over which Kyiv has been in conflict with pro-Russian forces since 2014.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Putin launched his so-called \u201cspecial military operation\u201d on 24 February, claiming he was acting in defence of the Russian-speaking people in the eastern Donbas region.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"aa5c8999-8656-4f67-a86d-c2267853079e\" class=\"element element-interactive element--inline element-inline css-1mq3w6b\" data-alt=\"Ukraine map\" data-cypress=\"interactive-element-Ukraine%20map\" data-spacefinder-role=\"inline\"><\/figure>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Budanov said he was convinced the Russian president was seeking to split Ukraine despite the attack in the west, only the third major assault there since the war began.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">He said: \u201cPutin is already changing the main operational directions \u2013 towards the south and the east. There is reason to believe that he is considering a \u2018Korean scenario\u2019 [for Ukraine]. That is, trying to impose a dividing line between the unoccupied and occupied regions of our country. In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine. After all, he is definitely not able to swallow the entire country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Russia has been bogged down in the besieged south-eastern port city of Mariupol in its attempts to create a land corridor between Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and Donbas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Budanov said he did not believe Mariupol would fall soon and that Russian troops would face guerrilla tactics even if it did manage to defeat the experienced Azov battalion in the flattened city.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">He said: \u201cThe occupiers will try to unite the occupied territories into a single quasi-state entity, which will oppose independent Ukraine. We are already seeing attempts to create \u2018parallel\u2019 authorities in the occupied territories and force people to give up the hryvnia [Ukraine\u2019s national currency].<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">\u201cThey may want to bargain at the international level. However, the resistance and protests of our citizens on the occupied territories, counterattacks by the armed forces and gradual liberation \u2013 significantly complicate the implementation of enemy\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">\u201cIn addition, the season of total Ukrainian guerrilla safari will soon begin. Then there will be one relevant scenario left for the Russians \u2013 how to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Oleksii Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, echoed the intelligence chief\u2019s analysis. \u201cWithin a week or two, Russia will withdraw troops from Kyiv and Kharkiv regions and send them to Donbas,\u201d he said. \u201cThey realised that they will not be able to take over the big cities; they will announce the completion of the first phase of the \u2018special operation\u2019 and the beginning of the second \u2013 the \u2018liberation of Donbas\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Arestovych continued: \u201cThey now have three tasks: to surround our troops in Donbas, to completely occupy Mariupol and the south. If they lose Kherson [a city west of Mariupol], their entire Mariupol occupation will collapse. And that\u2019s all. There will be no capture of Kyiv, Kharkiv or Odesa.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Elsewhere, in Kharkiv the authorities reported 44 artillery strikes and 140 rocket assaults in a single day, including on a nuclear research facility. In Kyiv, the authorities warned that Russians were increasingly disguising themselves as civilians to engage in sabotage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">Saturday\u2019s missile attacks on Lviv, in the west of Ukraine close to the Polish border, were said by Ukrainian officials to have been a message of Russian defiance for Biden, who had been speaking in neighbouring Poland, and an attempt to hit Ukrainian fuel and military hardware supplies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">The two targets of the attacks were a fuel depot and a factory used for repairing tanks, anti-aircraft systems and radar stations. Both were close to apartment blocks and only a mile from the Unesco world heritage-protected city centre.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">One witness, Dmitry Leonov, 36, an IT worker, said the ground shook and people were thrown to the ground by the force of the blasts at the tank factory. The windows of a local school were said to have been smashed by the force.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1wj398p\">The Lviv emergency services chief, Khrystyna Avdyeyeva, said the fire at the fuel depot was finally put out after 13 hours at 6.49am on Sunday. Of those responsible for launching the missiles, which came from Crimea, up to 1,000 miles away, she said: \u201cLet them burn in the same hell. But our heroes will not be there, so nobody will survive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>source:Daniel Boffey<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vladimir Putin is seeking to split Ukraine into two, emulating the postwar division between North and South Korea, the invaded country\u2019s military intelligence chief has said. In comments that raise the prospect of a long and bitter frozen conflict, Gen Kyrylo Budanov, who foretold of Russia\u2019s invasion as far back as November, warned of bloody [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":18544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11363,11830,12168,183,5304,11394,5178,9204,11183,11583,287,11555,9331,6848,9233,10767,6623,6083,5995,6193,524,2419,11365,9127,6159,6496,6351,12248,6569,3577,2264,1444,10840,10954,5252,2471,6086,7601,9515,6690,5378,1152,5342,8029,6194,5992,414,5657,5572,5254,12985,5340,12085,4802,7964,6666,6072,11973,7980,837,11082,3805,12526,71,7400,10722,7639,3457,5217,11233,3852,8055,6736,7584,7185,10041,6965,9030,5376,7931,9178,5180,5555,5465,2671,7999,6348,11331,694,6886,5251,3954,11359,36,594,6874],"class_list":["post-18925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-aircraft","tag-armed-forces","tag-artillery","tag-assault","tag-attack","tag-attacks","tag-biden","tag-border","tag-boys","tag-capital","tag-children","tag-citizens","tag-city","tag-civilians","tag-collapse","tag-conflict","tag-crimea","tag-dead","tag-donbas","tag-donetsk","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-euro","tag-factory","tag-february","tag-fire","tag-food","tag-french","tag-frozen","tag-fuel","tag-future","tag-government","tag-hell","tag-human-rights","tag-international","tag-invasion","tag-joe-biden","tag-kharkiv","tag-kherson","tag-killed","tag-korea","tag-korean-style","tag-kremlin","tag-kyiv","tag-land","tag-luhansk","tag-lviv","tag-macron","tag-mariupol","tag-military","tag-missile","tag-missiles","tag-moscow","tag-nations","tag-nato","tag-north","tag-nuclear","tag-odesa","tag-one","tag-overthrow","tag-poland","tag-port","tag-president","tag-pro-russian","tag-putin","tag-referendum","tag-removed","tag-rocket","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-russian-troops","tag-russians","tag-sabotage","tag-school","tag-sex","tag-south-korea","tag-speech","tag-split","tag-success","tag-tanks","tag-territories","tag-troops","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian","tag-un","tag-unesco","tag-united-nations","tag-us","tag-us-president","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","tag-war","tag-will","tag-windows","tag-world","tag-who","tag-zelenskiy"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}