Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a signing ceremony Friday to formally annex four Moscow-occupied areas of Ukraine, the Kremlin said Thursday, following staged referendums in the regions that were widely condemned by Western governments as a "sham."
Why it matters: The expected annexation will dramatically raise the stakes in the occupied regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as Putin could attempt to portray any attack in the areas as an attack on Russia itself.
