Ukraine FM: Russia will do everything to break up

VILNIUS, Lithuania – The Ukrainian foreign minister says Russia “will be doing everything to break up Ukraine, somehow to divide Ukraine further.”

Pavlo Klimkin says Moscow doesn’t want “to have a free and democratic Ukraine as such” and his country needs “military, political and economic support to fight Russia’s attempt to ‘suffocate’ southern Ukraine by blocking access to the Azov Sea.”

Klimkin spoke Friday to the Baltic News Agency during a visit to Lithuania.

In November, a Russian coast guard vessel fired on and seized three Ukrainian naval ships as they were transiting from Odesa on the Black Sea to Mariupol.

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 in a move that Ukraine and most of the world views as illegal.