Separatist Speaks Out in Referendum; Ukraine accuses Russia of targeting Korean model

The leader of the self-proclaimed breakaway republic of Lugansk, Leonid Pasechnik, said on Sunday that, in the “near future”, a referendum on the integration of this territory to Russia could be held, the official Russian news agency TASS reported. In response, the Ukrainian government warned that “no country in the world” will recognize an “illegal” referendum and accused Russia of seeking to partition Ukraine along the Korean model.

For the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, turning the country into a Korea would be Moscow’s purpose, after having failed in its plan to conquer the entire country. “There are reasons to think that Putin contemplates a Korean-style scenario, consisting of a dividing line between the occupied and unoccupied regions of our country,” he said in a post on his Facebook account on Sunday.

On the possible referendum, in which the local population could give their opinion on the desire to belong to the Russian Federation, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that such a consultation would face a more forceful “international response” than sanctions. today, which would “deepen” Russian isolation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk on February 21. Three days later, he launched a military offensive to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine. The argument is that the Ukrainian army would commit a “genocide” of the pro-Russian population of the Donbas, to which more than 700,000 Russian passports have been distributed in recent years. Efforts by the invading troops are now focused on creating a land corridor with Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014.