The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is saying 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 U.N. 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.

President Zelensky, who has previously sought Russia’s expulsion from the United Nations and its designation as a terrorist state, has renewed the latter appeal, calling on America to legally recognize Russia as such. He made the appeal on Saturday while also urging all civilians still in the Donbas region to evacuate as fighting with Russian forces intensifies.

Mr. Zelensky said that should the state department designate Russia as a terrorist state, it would be an “effective defense of the free world.” Last week the Senate approved a nonbinding resolution calling on the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to call Russia a state sponsor of terrorism for its attacks in Ukraine and elsewhere — notably, Syria — but Mr. Blinken has resisted such an appeal, saying that it could undercut Washington’s few diplomatic links with Russia. 

Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, told the Security Council on Friday: “The denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine will be carried out in full.” Mr. Polyansky also warned Western nations supplying long-range artillery and MLRS surface-to-surface rockets that they were shifting “the provisional security line” further toward the west, “and in so doing clarifying even further the aims and objectives of our special military operation.”

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield cited evidence of mounting atrocities, including the reported bombings of schools and hospitals, “the killing of aid workers and journalists, the targeting of civilians attempting to flee, the brutal execution-style murder of those going about their daily business in Bucha,” a suburb of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, where local authorities said hundreds of people were killed during its occupation by Russian forces.

She added that there is evidence Russia forces “have interrogated, detained forcibly, deported an estimated hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, including children — tearing them from their homes and sending them to remote regions in the east.”

Nearly two million Ukrainians refugees have been sent to Russia, according to both Ukrainian and Russian officials. Ukraine portrays these journeys as forced transfers to enemy soil, which is considered a war crime. Russia calls them humanitarian evacuations of war victims who already speak Russian and are grateful for a new home.

“The United States has information that officials from Russia’s presidential administration are overseeing and coordinating filtration operations,” Ms. Thomas-Greenfield told the council.

Mr. Polyansky countered that despite Ukraine’s efforts at intimidation of its citizens, “people are choosing the country that they trust” — Russia.

He warned that heavy weapons being poured into Ukraine by the West “will spill over into Europe” because of what he claimed is “the flourishing corruption among Ukraine’s political and military leadership.”

Addressing Western ambassadors, he said: “The aims of our special military operation will be achieved either way, however much fuel you pour into the fire in the form of weapons.”

Amidst the ceaseless war of words between Moscow and Kyiv and more vicious fighting on the ground, a top advisor to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, weighed in by tweeting, “#RussiaIsATerroristState.”