It was publicly stated by the Ukrainian government in Kiev on Wednesday that control of the situation, for all intents and purposes has been lost of the eastern region of the country.

The interim president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov says that he believes that Russia has now set an eye on six more regions in eastern Ukraine. With the separatists movement taking control of multiple government buildings in DOnetsk and Luhansk, those regions are one step closer to going over to the Russians and thus giving Russia a land connection to the previously lost Crimean Peninsula.

Speaking Wednesday at a meeting of regional leaders in Kyiv, Turchynov said ‘saboteurs’ have received instructions from Moscow to destabilize the regions of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, Zaporizhzha, Mykolayiv and Odesa.

This news comes as another administration building fell to pro-Russian separatists near the Russian border earlier this week. Those regions, and their separatist movements have set a referendum for secession for May 11.

Wednesday also saw the release of an untranslated video released by Ukraine’s security service, that they say proves that Moscow is recruiting agents from within Ukraine. The video shows a camouflage clad man known only as “Citizen K,” who said he was recruited by Russian intelligence when he made a trip to the Crimean peninsula earlier this month. The authenticity of the video could not be confirmed.

Negotiations have resumed for the release of seven European OSCE observers, for Germans, a Pole, a Dane, and a Swede, that were taken hostage last week in the eastern city of Slovyansk. The pro-Russian mayor of that city said yesterday that he would release the seven hostages in return for the release of pro-Russian activists arrested by Ukrainian authorities.

In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry called on Moscow “to leave the Ukraine in peace,” as he was addressing the Atlantic Council, he said that Russia was seeking to “change the security landscape of Eastern Europe.”

Saying that “the events in Ukraine are a wake-up call,” Kerry went on to say, “Our European allies have spent more than 20 years with us working to integrate Russia into the Euro-Atlantic community. It is not as if we really haven’t bent over backwards to try to set a new course in the post-Cold War era.”

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, countered that the West’s assertions that Moscow was behind the recent unrest in eastern Ukraine, saying, “I state responsibly: There are neither Russian instructors, nor special units, nor troops, no one there.” Instead he says, thew West was behind the coup d’etat that ousted the former Ukrainian leader. He continued saying, “I think what is happening now shows us who really was mastering the process from the beginning. But in the beginning, the United States preferred to remain in the shadow.”

But, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, who NATO’s Supreme COmmander in Europe, said, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well-planned and organized, and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.”

  kerry, putin, Russia, separatists, Ukraine, unrest, world