Putin announces Russia will annex four Ukrainian territories after sham referendums
The move is expected to unleash a wave of sanctions and widespread condemnation from other nations.
Vladimir Putin on Friday declared that four provinces of Ukraine will become Russian territory based on referendums that took place this week, a move that is expected to unleash a wave of sanctions and widespread condemnation from other nations.
The declaration marked the latest escalation in Russia’s seventh-month war in Ukraine, where its armed forces have suffered surprisingly heavy losses that have eroded Putin’s standing at home.
“I’m sure the federal assembly will support the laws of formation of the four new regions in Russia, four new subjects of the Russian federation,” Putin said in a speech Friday at the Kremlin. “Because this is the will of millions of people.”
During the ceremony, Putin said the four provinces — Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — will be folded into Russia and will be protected by “all available means.” They will join the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed after its more limited initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
The annexations represent a violation of international law and the vast majority of nations won’t recognize the territory as Russian.
Putin also called on Kyiv for a ceasefire and to return to the table for negotiations, but he made sure to assert that the annexations would not be up for discussion.
“The choice of the people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson, we will not discuss. It has been made. Russia will not betray it,” Putin said.
He largely used the rest of his speech to air conspiracies and accusations against the West, which he claimed is waging a “hybrid-war” against Russia. He attempted to paint a version of events where the West is pushing a “neocolonial” system and using the “dollar as a power tool.”
The expected pronouncement had been met with fresh warnings this week that Russia will be even more isolated internationally, amid fears that Putin will use the declaration as a pretext to escalate the war, claiming that the Ukrainians are now attacking Russian territory.
“The UK will never recognise Russia’s illegal annexations in Ukraine,” the UK’s defense chief, Ben Wallace, tweeted Friday morning. “Russia doesn’t even control some of these oblasts. The truth is Russia is losing in Ukraine and their incompetent Generals are sending thousands to their deaths to please President Putin’s imperialist fantasy.”
The United Nations was preparing on Friday to consider a U.S.-sponsored resolution dismissing the latest territorial claims and calling on Russia to remove all of its troops from Ukraine.
Russia wields a veto in the U.N. Security Council, which commonly deals with such matters, so diplomats are considering taking the resolution directly to the General Assembly.
At the U.N. headquarters in New York, Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the annexation “would have no legal value and deserves to be condemned.”
He told reporters that “the so-called referenda were conducted during active armed conflict in areas under Russian occupation and outside Ukraine’s legal and constitutional framework.”
“They cannot be called genuine expressions of the popular will,” Guterres added.
Putin’s latest provocation also earned a full-throated pledge from Washington and its European allies to continue backing Ukraine’s resistance.
“The United States and our allies and partners will continue to assist Ukraine in its fight to defend its territory against Russian aggression,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said ahead of the Russian announcement, deriding what he called a violation of international law.
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- Discussion
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Vladimir Putin just declared that four provinces of Ukraine will become Russian territory based on referendums that took place this week.
This is expected to unleash a wave of sanctions and widespread condemnation from other nations. https://t.co/JJNLFKp86I
— POLITICO (@politico) September 30, 2022
“I want to be clear about this: The United States will never, never, never recognize Russia's claims on Ukraine sovereign territory,” Biden said yesterday. “The so-called referendum was a sham.” https://t.co/otRz0XYiFl pic.twitter.com/CbCX9JrBkL
— POLITICO (@politico) September 30, 2022
I've watched a lot of Putin speeches over the last 10-15 years and this is the most anti-US one by a really long way.
If I were a western policymaker wondering if he'd really use nuclear weapons – and he hasn't even got to them yet – I'd be very concerned. pic.twitter.com/3lXMRH4YkI
— max seddon (@maxseddon) September 30, 2022
Putin says Russia wants to lead an "anti-colonial movement" to liberate the world. "We need to turn this disgraceful page. Western hegemony will be smashed. This is inevitable. We must do this for our people, the great historical Russia." pic.twitter.com/0ib3VVPfLk
— max seddon (@maxseddon) September 30, 2022
https://t.co/7gscLcN2Xf pic.twitter.com/mekpI8ymBJ
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) September 30, 2022
There is a laundry list of violations of international law, including these annexations and numerous documented atrocities against Ukrainians. So when will the UN and other international bodies do something about it all? Increased sanctions don’t help.
They deleted this tweet. I’m sure @mschlapp will explain this. https://t.co/IoXSCFTROW
— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) October 1, 2022
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