Ukraine says Russia wants to split nation into two, calls for more arms

President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the West to give Ukraine tanks, planes and missiles to help fend off the Russian forces, which the Kyiv govt said were increasingly targeting fuel and food depots

Russia wants to split Ukraine into two, as happened with North and South Korea, Ukraine's military intelligence chief said on Sunday, vowing “total” guerrilla warfare to prevent a carve-up of the country.
 

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the West to give Ukraine tanks, planes and missiles to help fend off the Russian forces, which the Kyiv government said were increasingly targeting fuel and food depots.
 

Four missiles hit Lviv on Saturday just 60 km from the Polish border, local officials said, in the most significant attack on the city in the month-old war. Russia struck military targets in Lviv with high-precision cruise missiles, the Russian defence ministry said.
 

Ukraine asked the Red Cross not to open a planned office in Russia's Rostov-on-Don, saying it would legitimise Moscow's "humanitarian corridors" and the abduction and forced deportation of Ukrainians.
 

US officials continued efforts to soften comments on Saturday from US President Joe Biden, who said in a fiery speech in Poland that Russian leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”. 
 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had no strategy of regime change in Moscow and that Biden had simply meant Putin could not be “empowered to wage war” against Ukraine or anywhere else. 
 

Zelenskiyof conflict, Russia has failed to seize any major Ukrainian city and Moscow signalled on Friday it was scaling back its ambitions to focus on securing the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army for the past eight years.
 

“In fact, it is an attempt to create North and South Korea in Ukraine,” Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence said. He predicted Ukraine's army would push back Russian forces.
 

“In addition, the season of a total Ukrainian guerrilla safari will soon begin. Then there will be one relevant scenario left for the Russians, how to survive,” he said.
 

Ukraine's foreign ministry spokesperson also dismissed talk of any referendum in eastern Ukraine. “All fake referendums in the temporarily occupied territories are null and void and will have no legal validity,”Oleg Nikolenko told Reuters. 

US diplomats: No policy of regime change in Russia
 

Top American officials said on Sunday that the United States does not have a policy of regime change in Russia, ramping up efforts to clarify President Joe Biden's statement that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”
 

Julianne Smith, the US ambassador to NATO, sought to contextualize Biden's remarks, saying they followed a day of speaking with Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw.
 

Next round of talks will take place in Turkey

The next round of face to face talks between Ukraine and Russia will take place in Turkey on March 28-30, Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia said on social media on Sunday.
 

Turkey and other nations must still talk to Russia to help end the war in Ukraine, Turkey's presidential 

spokesman said, adding that Kyiv needed more support to defend itself.
 

Ukraine described previous talks with Russia, launched after Russia unleashed an invasion last month, as “very difficult”. Russia trying to encircle Ukrainian forces in east,  Ukraine is mounting small counter-offensive actions as Russia's military tries to encircle its forces in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said on Sunday.