In a clear violation of international law, Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed treaties in Moscow to annex occupied areas of Ukraine. He said he would use “all available means” to protect the territory.
In a speech before the treaty-signing ceremony, Putin urged Ukraine to sit down for talks to end the seven months of fighting that started when he invaded the neighbouring country. But he warned Russia would never give up the occupied regions and would protect them as sovereign territory.
The ceremony came three days after the “results” were announced of Kremlin-orchestrated “referendums” on joining Russia. That process has been dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a bare-faced land grab done at gunpoint and based on lies.
Putin said Ukrainian authorities should “treat… with respect” the lopsided results of the Moscow-managed votes and warned sternly that Russia would never surrender control of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Both houses of the Kremlin-controlled Russian parliament will meet next week to rubber-stamp the treaties for the regions to join Russia, sending them to Putin for his approval.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials dismissed his remarks, saying the future of Ukraine was being decided on the battlefield. “We continue to work and liberate Ukrainian territories,” said Andrii Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office.
“And we don’t pay attention to those whose time to take pills has come. The army is working, Ukraine is united. Only moving forward.”
The annexations are Russia’s attempt to set its gains in stone, at least on paper, and scare Ukraine and its Western backers with the prospect of an increasingly escalatory conflict unless they back down — which they show no signs of doing. The Kremlin paved the way for the land-grabs with “referendums”, sometimes at gunpoint, that Ukraine and western powers universally dismissed as rigged shams.
