Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow is expanding the scope of the Ukraine war beyond the eastern Donbas region.
The announcement took place as Russian troops attacked targets in eastern and southern Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Russia’s new goals in the conflict will include expanding deeper into Ukrainian territory if Western nations continue sending Kyiv long-range missiles, such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Lavrov told state news agency RIA Novosti.
His statement verified a Tuesday warning by the Biden administration that Russia was planning to annex additional Ukrainian territory.
"Russia is laying the groundwork to annex Ukrainian territory that it controls in direct violation of Ukraine's sovereignty," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, according to the AFP news agency. "Already, Russia is installing illegitimate proxy officials in the areas of Ukraine that are under its control.”
Kirby also said Russia had plans to organize "sham referenda" in the areas it has seized, possibly as early as September.
"Annexation by force will be a gross violation of the UN Charter and we will not allow it to go unchallenged or unpunished," he said, adding was "exposing" the Russian plans "so the world knows that any purported annexation is premeditated, illegal and illegitimate."
The areas targeted for annexation include Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, all of Donetsk and Luhansk, Kirby added.
Reports of Lavrov’s acknowledgement of Moscow’s expanding military goals in Ukraine came as EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen charged that Russia was “blackmailing” the EU over energy imports as fear mounts that Russia will cut off supplies to Europe ahead of winter.