Washington | The White House on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) doubled down on its assertion that Russia would try to annex additional Ukrainian territory, warning that Moscow intends to claim as its own large swaths of the country’s east and south sometime later this year.

“Russia is beginning to roll out a version of what you could call an ‘annexation playbook,’” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, citing what he called “ample evidence” gathered by Western intelligence and already “in the public domain” indicating that President Vladimir Putin wants to take Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and the Donbas region “in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty”.

Washington Post