KHARKIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized two Ukrainian breakaway republics as independent, a move certain to further inflame animosities with the West and escalate fears of an invasion that could ignite fighting reminiscent of World War II and redraw the map of Eastern Europe.
Putin had earlier informed French President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany in a phone call of his decision to sign a decree recognizing the independence of the two pro-Russia republics, which comprise the part of eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas region. A Kremlin readout of those calls said the two Western leaders were disappointed but “expressed their readiness to continue contacts.”
In a long address to his nation from his office, Putin — leaning back in his chair behind a wooden desk equipped with a bank of telephones and a computer — gave a historic excursion examining in detail Ukraine’s origins and its territorial evolution across history, building a case that he has long pushed for: that “Ukraine was never a true nation.”
In his telling, Ukraine had become little more than a Western puppet, a corruption-riddled government that has only delivered “bankruptcy in a country that produced rockets and space technology,” when the country was one of the Soviet Union’s republics. The blame, he said, lay with Western organizations and governments that had effectively plundered the country’s resources and left the state with no power.
“There’s just no independent Ukrainian state,” he said.
Putin’s announcement came after a meeting with his security council, which urged him to demand independence for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic. The meeting followed Russia’s assertion that Ukrainian army units had breached its border Monday, another in a series of claims the West fears will provide Russia with a supposed justification for an invasion of its neighbor.
The Russia-installed leaders of the separatist regions had appealed to Putin to recognize their enclaves and requested Russian military assistance in their fight against Ukrainian forces. Putin said the objective of his conference with his security council was to “listen to colleagues and decide on our next steps in this area.”
Putin’s new strategy would mean the end of the Minsk agreements, the much-reviled accords — signed after Russia-backed separatist forces surrounded several thousand Ukrainian soldiers — that have maintained a threadbare cease-fire in the Donbas since 2015. But more immediately, it could also provide the cover for Moscow to begin its blitz into Ukraine.
Russia’s forces seem poised to strike for just such a moment. Some 150,000 troops and a large-scale arsenal of Russia’s top land, air and sea materiel is now assembled on Ukraine’s borders. Moscow has repeatedly denied it has plans for an invasion, but has warned that Western failure to engage with its security demands, including a pledge never to allow Ukraine to join NATO, would trigger a “military-technical response.” The Kremlin has not elaborated on what that would mean.
Frenzied shuttle diplomacy — chiefly from Macron, engaging in as diplomatic broker with President Joe Biden and Putin — has failed to stop what appears to be an inevitable path to war.
The Russian leader has previously accused the Ukrainian government of pursuing “genocide” in Donetsk and Luhansk, the vast majority of whose populations are ethnic Russians. The U.S. and NATO have accused Moscow of planning so-called false flag operations in the area to justify an all-out invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday, Russia’s military said it killed five saboteurs crossing into its territory from Ukraine and destroyed two Ukrainian army combat vehicles. But the Ukrainian military dismissed those claims, which were reported by Russian state news agencies, as “completely fake.”
Since 2014, fighting between Kyiv’s forces and the Russia-backed secessionists in Donetsk and Luhansk, which make up Ukraine’s Donbas region, has killed more than 14,000 people. A cease-fire has been breached repeatedly by both sides. In recent weeks, as Russian troops massed near Ukraine’s borders, Russian-aligned media and digital actors have churned out constant stories of Ukrainian atrocities against ethnic Russians as part of a disinformation campaign to paint the government in Kyiv as a cabal of violent far-right nationalists.
In the U.S., White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on NBC’s “Today” show Monday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be “extremely violent” and appeared to be days, if not hours, away. The Biden administration has insisted for several days that a Russian assault was imminent.
“This will not simply be some conventional war between two armies. It will be a war waged by Russia on the Ukrainian people to repress them, to crush them, to harm them,” Sullivan said. “We believe the world must mobilize to counter this kind of Russian aggression should those tanks roll across the border.”
Sullivan said Biden remained open to a summit with Putin — which Macron has tried to broker — but downplayed the likelihood that one would occur. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is scheduled to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday — as long as there has been no invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. says.
“Every indication we see on the ground right now in, terms of the disposition of Russian forces, is that they are in fact getting prepared for a major attack on Ukraine,” Sullivan said. “We will go the extra mile on diplomacy, but we are also prepared with our allies and partners to respond decisively if Russia attacks.”
The Russian army’s Southern Military District — which operates in areas neighboring Ukraine — said Monday that troops and border guards had prevented an incursion of what it called a “sabotage and reconnaissance group” coming in from Ukraine into Russian territory.
“Five violators of the Russian Federation’s border from a sabotage and reconnaissance group were eliminated in an armed clash,” said a statement from the army, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. The statement said the incursion occurred around 6 a.m. near Mityakinskaya, a Russian border village about 22 miles east of the city of Luhansk.
During the clash, a pair of Ukrainian army vehicles entered Russian territory but were destroyed by Russian military units using anti-tank systems, the statement said, adding: “No Russian Armed Forces and Federal Security Service members have been hurt.”
A spokesman for the Ukrainian military’s Joint Forces Operation rejected the Russian allegations, saying that “all information about a possible incursion by a reconnaissance group is false. We haven’t done any assault operations. It’s completely fake.”
In Moscow, the deputy chairman of the security council, Dmitry Medvedev, told Putin that if Russia went ahead and recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics, it would face “unprecedented pressure” internationally but that there was no choice. He said Russia’s previous recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia had been a lesson to the West that Russia could not be ignored, according to a translation of Medvedev’s comments by the Al-Jazeera news channel.
Putin said the use of Ukraine “as an instrument of confrontation with our country poses a serious, very big threat to us.” Moscow’s priority, he said, was “not confrontation, but security.”
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(Times staff writers Erin B. Logan in Washington and Henry Chu in London contributed to this report.)
