Russian President Vladimir Putin may be seeking to split Ukraine in two after failing to seize the capital, Kyiv, according to the head of Ukraine's defense intelligence agency.

Brig. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov said in a statement Sunday that Putin may now be pursuing a "Korean scenario" that would see Russian forces try to occupy the east and south of Ukraine since they no longer have the strength to "swallow the whole state."

"After the failures near Kyiv and the impossibility to overthrow the central government in Ukraine, Putin is already changing his main direction of operations -- to the south and east," Budanov said. "There are grounds to suggest that he is considering the Korean scenario for Ukraine. That is to attempt to lay down a new line of contact between the non-occupied and occupied regions of our country. In fact, it's an attempt to create in Ukraine a North and South Korea. Indeed, he definitely doesn’t have the strength to swallow the whole state."

Budanov said he believes Putin still wants to open a land corridor between the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula and the other Russian-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine, which would mean the occupation of besieged Mariupol, a strategic port city in the southeast that has been under heavy Russian bombardment. But he said Ukraine's continued counterattacks as well as resistance by local people in the occupied areas were disrupting Putin's plans.

Budanov also predicted the start of guerrilla warfare that would make it impossible for Russia to hold territory.

"Soon the season of the total Ukrainian partisan safari will start," he said. "Then for the Russians will remain only one relevant scenario -- how to survive."

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell

Ukraine's government announced for the first time in nearly three weeks that no humanitarian corridors for evacuating civilians will be open on Monday due to concerns about possible "provocations" from Russian forces.

"Our intelligence has informed us of possible provocations from the side of the occupiers on the routes of the humanitarian corridors," Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a statement on her official Telegram channel. "And so in interest of citizens’ safety today we are not opening humanitarian corridors."

The Ukrainian government has been evacuating hundreds of thousands of civilians from cities and towns in the north, east and south of the country through established corridors. Officials have previously accused Russian forces of shelling some of the evacuation routes, despite agreeing to cease-fires.

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell

In his first interview with Russian journalists since his country was invaded, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described some of Ukraine's positions for ending the war.

During an interview with popular Russian independent news sites TV Rain and Meduza, Zelenskyy said any peace deal is only possible if Russia withdraws its troops to the territory occupied before the start of the invasion, meaning Crimea and the separatist-held areas of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said his main goals are "to maximally reduce the number of casualties (and) to shorten the length of this war."

"The withdrawal of Russia to compromise territories -- but that is everything (that) was before 24 February, before the assault. Let them return there," Zelenskyy said. "I understand that to force Russia to completely liberate territory is impossible. That will lead to a third world war. I totally understand all that. And I say it: compromise. Return to where all this started and there we will try to resolve the question of Donbas, the difficult question of Donbas."

Zelenskyy also said that Ukraine is ready to discuss taking a position of "neutrality" and "non-nuclear status" with Russia, but wants security guarantees for his country in return.

He again said he would put the issue to a referendum in Ukraine and that any treaty would need to be ratified by "guarantor countries" -- which other officials have suggested must include the United States.

Zelenskyy reiterated that no guarantor countries, such as the United Kingdom and Turkey, will sign any agreement while Russian troops remain on Ukrainian soil.

-ABC News' Patrick Reevell

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke cautiously about U.S. President Joe Biden using tough language to describe his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

In an appearance on the France 3 TV channel, Macron warned against escalating language a day after Biden while in Warsaw called Putin a "butcher" and added, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power."

"I wouldn't use this type of wording because I continue to hold discussions with President Putin," Macron said.

White House officials quickly clarified Biden's off-the-cuff remarks, saying the president wasn’t calling for an immediate change in government in Moscow.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced Biden, saying "it’s not up to the president of the U.S. and not up to the Americans to decide who will remain in power in Russia."

Macron said the ramped-up rhetoric is doing nothing to bring peace to Ukraine.

"We want to stop the war that Russia has launched in Ukraine without escalation -- that's the objective," Macron said. "If this is what we want to do, we should not escalate things -- neither with words nor actions."

All Russian troops have left the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv, withdrawing north toward the borders of Belarus and Russia to consolidate before likely redeploying to the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Wednesday.

But even with the Russians gone, the territory remains treacherous.

"There are some indications that they left behind mines and things like that, so the Ukrainians are being somewhat careful in some areas north of Kyiv as they begin to clear the ground and clear the territory and re-occupy it," the official said.

While the U.S. hasn't yet seen these troops redeploy elsewhere in Ukraine, it'll likely happen soon, according to the official. Ukrainian forces are preparing for a major fight in Donbas, the official said.

The official also said the Pentagon is "monitoring" an apparent nitric acid explosion in Ukraine's Luhansk region, which Russia blamed on Ukraine.

"We've seen the Russians claim that this was a Ukrainian attack on this. We do not believe that is true," the official said. "We do believe that the Russians are responsible, but exactly what they used when they did it, why they did it, what the damage is, we just don't have that level of detail," the official said.

The official also noted that a small number of Ukrainians currently in the U.S. for "professional military education" were pulled aside for a couple days of training on Switchblade drones, which the U.S. is sending overseas as part of its military aid, according to the official.

"Although it's not a very difficult system to operate, we took advantage of having them in the country to give them some rudimentary training on that," the official said.

-ABC News' Matt Seyler