In response to a Russian general’s claim that Russia seeks complete authority over southern Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a warning.

“All the nations that, like us, believe in the victory of life over death must fight alongside us. They must aid us, because we are the first in line. And who will come next?” Zelensky stated in a video address late on Friday.

The Russian state news agencies reported that Russian deputy commander of Russia’s central military district, Rustam Minnekayev, had stated that complete control over southern Ukraine would grant Russia access to Transnistria, a breakaway Russian-occupied region of Moldova in the country’s west.

That would cut off Ukraine’s entire coastline and mean Russian forces pushing hundreds of miles west beyond current lines, past the major Ukrainian coastal cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa.

Ukraine’s defence ministry stated on Twitter that Minnekayev’s statement demonstrated that Russia was no longer concealing its objectives.

Moscow, it added, “the’second phase’ of the conflict is to occupy eastern and southern Ukraine, not to defeat the phantom Nazis. True imperialism.”

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