Putin says four annexed Ukrainian regions will be ‘Russian forever’
According to EURACTIV, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin moved on Friday (30 September) to formally announce the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions by Moscow, in what is Europe’s biggest land grab since Hitler.
Moscow’s annexation of the Russian-occupied areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia follows what the international community denounces as sham referendums staged with military escorts and reports of voters held at gunpoint.
Moscow’s proxies in the occupied regions claimed majorities of up to 99% in favour of joining Russia.
Putin signed the decrees recognising the two newly occupied Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as independent on Thursday (29 September), and they were published online by the Kremlin on Friday.
In February, the Kremlin signed similar decrees for the region of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Speaking at a ceremony before hundreds of dignitaries in the Kremlin, Putin claimed “this is the will of millions of people.”
“I want the Kyiv government and their real bosses in the west to hear me (…) residents of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson are becoming our citizens forever,” he said.
The staged signing ceremony in the Kremlin was accompanied by a stage set up in Moscow’s Red Square, with billboards proclaiming the four regions as part of Russia and a concert planned for the evening.
Yevgeny Balitsky, the head of the Russian-backed administration in occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia shared an image of himself alongside Vladimir Saldo, his counterpart in Kherson, Denis Pushilin, from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, and Leonid Pasechnik from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic.
It was not immediately clear how Moscow imagines the administrative process to unfold.
The exact details of Russia’s annexation are unclear, but it appears that Russia is laying claim to about 109,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory, or about 18%, in addition to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
If Russia establishes control over the whole area it claims but currently doesn’t fully control, Putin would have annexed around 136,000 square kilometres or more than 22% of Ukraine, whose borders Russia recognised in a treaty after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Putin has long claimed that Ukraine is targeting Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, and repeatedly made the unfounded accusation that Ukraine has carried out genocide in the east of the country.
In his speech, he urged Ukraine to cease military action and return to the negotiating table.
