Russia intends to dissolve Ukraine from world map: US envoy

The US ambassador to the United Nations said Friday there should no longer be any doubt that Russia intends to dismantle Ukraine and dissolve it from the world map entirely. 

Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UN Security Council that the United States is seeing growing signs that Russia is laying the groundwork to attempt to annex all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, including by installing illegitimate proxy officials in Russian-held areas, with the goal of holding sham referenda or decree to join Russia.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has even stated that this is Russia's war aim, she said. Lavrov told an Arab summit in Cairo on Sunday that Moscow's overarching goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its unacceptable regime.

Russia and Ukraine accused each other Friday of shelling a prison in a separatist region of eastern Ukraine, an attack that reportedly killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war who were captured after the fall of a key southern city in May. 

Both sides said the assault was premeditated with the aim of covering up atrocities.

Russia claimed that Ukraine's military used US-supplied multiple rocket launchers to strike the prison in Olenivka, a settlement controlled by the Moscow-backed Donetsk People's Republic.

Separatist authorities and Russian officials said the attack killed 53 Ukrainian POWs and wounded another 75.

Moscow opened a probe into the attack, sending a team to the site from Russia's Investigative Committee, the country's main criminal investigation agency. 

The state RIA Novosti agency reported that fragments of U.S.-supplied precision High Mobility Artillery Rocket System rockets were found at the site.

The Ukrainian military denied making any rocket or artillery strikes in Olenivka, and accused the Russians of shelling the prison to cover up the alleged torture and execution of Ukrainians there. 

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the shelling as a a deliberate, cynical, calculated mass murder of Ukrainian prisoners.