Ukraine pushing Moscow to expand its military goals: Duma speaker

Russian parliamentary speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Tuesday that Ukraine was doing "everything" to ensure that Moscow's troops would not stop their "special military operation" at the borders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) in eastern Ukraine, the RIA Novosti agency reported.

The speaker of the lower house of Russia's parliament told members in a plenary session on Tuesday that Ukraine had become a "terrorist state", according to remarks posted on the State Duma's website.

Vyacheslav Volodin was quoted as saying that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was the head of a "criminal regime".

Moscow on Sunday claimed the "liberation" of the entire LPR on the territory of Ukraine's Luhansk province, and is pressing on with its campaign to wrest the adjoining DPR - Ukraine's Donetsk province - out of Kyiv's control.

But its forces have also taken control of the city of Kherson and large parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine's south and bombed targets all across Ukraine, as well as mounting an abortive advance on the capital Kyiv.

Russian officials have since the beginning of Moscow's "special military operation" in Ukraine sought to paint their neighbour as being controlled by anti-Russian fascists and "neo-Nazis", but have not pushed the idea that it is a terrorist state.

Ukraine and the West say the claim is baseless propaganda, used to justify a land grab.