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Putin's Russia triggers plan to formally annex occupied Ukrainian regions
Zee News - 9h ago
LONDON: Two Russian-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine announced plans to hold referendums on joining Russia later this week and an ally of President Vladimir Putin said the votes would alter the geopolitical landscape in Moscow's favour forever.
Putin's Russia triggers plan to formally annex occupied Ukrainian regions© Provided by Zee News
The move, which seriously escalates Moscow's standoff with the West, comes after Russia suffered a battlefield reversal in northeast Ukraine and as Putin ponders his next steps in a nearly seven-month-old conflict that has caused the most serious East-West rift since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Russian-backed, self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the neighbouring Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) said the planned referendums would be held from Sept. 23-27.
In a post on social media addressed to Putin, DPR head Denis Pushilin wrote: "I ask you, as soon as possible, in the event of a positive decision in the referendum - which we have no doubt about - to consider the DPR becoming a part of Russia."
Earlier on Tuesday, Russian-installed officials in the southern Kherson region, where Moscow's forces control around 95% of the territory, said they had also decided to hold a referendum. Pro-Russian authorities in part of Ukraine's Zaporizhia region were expected to follow suit.
Ukraine and the United States have said such referendums would be an illegal sham and have made clear that they and many other countries would not recognise the results.
Dmitry Medvedev, a former president who is currently deputy chairman of the Security Council, suggested before the announcements that the outcome of such votes would be irreversible and give Moscow - which has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world - carte blanche to defend what it would regard as legally its own territory.
"Encroachment onto Russian territory is a crime which allows you to use all the forces of self-defence," Medvedev said in a post on Telegram. "This is why these referendums are so feared in Kyiv and the West."
No future Russian leader would be able to constitutionally reverse their outcome, he added.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said that his chamber would support the two regions joining Russia if they voted to do so.
Washington and the West have so far been careful not to supply Ukraine with weapons that could be used to shell Russian territory, and Medvedev's interpretation of what de facto annexation would legally mean from Moscow's point of view looked like a future warning to the West.
"They (the referendums) would completely change the vector of Russia's development for decades. And not just of our country. The geopolitical transformation of the world would be irreversible once the new territories were incorporated into Russia," he wrote.
It is unclear how the referendums would be held given that Russian and Russian-backed forces control only around 60% of the Donetsk region, while Ukrainian forces are trying to retake Luhansk.
Pro-Russian officials have previously said the referendums could be held electronically.
The move would come eight years after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.
Zee News - 9h ago
LONDON: Two Russian-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine announced plans to hold referendums on joining Russia later this week and an ally of President Vladimir Putin said the votes would alter the geopolitical landscape in Moscow's favour forever.
Putin's Russia triggers plan to formally annex occupied Ukrainian regions© Provided by Zee News
The move, which seriously escalates Moscow's standoff with the West, comes after Russia suffered a battlefield reversal in northeast Ukraine and as Putin ponders his next steps in a nearly seven-month-old conflict that has caused the most serious East-West rift since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Russian-backed, self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the neighbouring Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) said the planned referendums would be held from Sept. 23-27.
In a post on social media addressed to Putin, DPR head Denis Pushilin wrote: "I ask you, as soon as possible, in the event of a positive decision in the referendum - which we have no doubt about - to consider the DPR becoming a part of Russia."
Earlier on Tuesday, Russian-installed officials in the southern Kherson region, where Moscow's forces control around 95% of the territory, said they had also decided to hold a referendum. Pro-Russian authorities in part of Ukraine's Zaporizhia region were expected to follow suit.
Ukraine and the United States have said such referendums would be an illegal sham and have made clear that they and many other countries would not recognise the results.
Dmitry Medvedev, a former president who is currently deputy chairman of the Security Council, suggested before the announcements that the outcome of such votes would be irreversible and give Moscow - which has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world - carte blanche to defend what it would regard as legally its own territory.
"Encroachment onto Russian territory is a crime which allows you to use all the forces of self-defence," Medvedev said in a post on Telegram. "This is why these referendums are so feared in Kyiv and the West."
No future Russian leader would be able to constitutionally reverse their outcome, he added.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said that his chamber would support the two regions joining Russia if they voted to do so.
Washington and the West have so far been careful not to supply Ukraine with weapons that could be used to shell Russian territory, and Medvedev's interpretation of what de facto annexation would legally mean from Moscow's point of view looked like a future warning to the West.
"They (the referendums) would completely change the vector of Russia's development for decades. And not just of our country. The geopolitical transformation of the world would be irreversible once the new territories were incorporated into Russia," he wrote.
It is unclear how the referendums would be held given that Russian and Russian-backed forces control only around 60% of the Donetsk region, while Ukrainian forces are trying to retake Luhansk.
Pro-Russian officials have previously said the referendums could be held electronically.
The move would come eight years after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.
Pedestrians walk in Luhansk- TARAS SCHEVCHENKO STATUE
Tue, September 20, 2022
By Guy Faulconbridge and Felix Light
LONDON (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday announced plans by separatists in Ukraine to hold referendums paving the way for the formal annexation of swathes of territory after nearly seven months of war with its neighbour, a former Soviet republic.
WHO WANTS A REFERENDUM?
The self-styled Donetsk (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republics (LPR), which President Vladimir Putin recognised as independent states just before the invasion on Feb. 24, have said they want referendums on joining Russia on Sept. 23-27 - that is this Friday to Tuesday.
The Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which have yet to be recognised as independent states by Russia, have also said they will hold votes of their own. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions, with only around 60% of Donetsk region in Russian hands.
HOW MUCH TERRITORY COULD UKRAINE LOSE?
The territory that Russia does control amounts to more than 90,000 square km, or about 15% of Ukraine's total area - equal to the size of Hungary or Portugal.
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. With Crimea and the territory in the four other regions, Russia would gain an area about the same size as the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.
WHAT'S THE SIGNIFICANCE?
If Russia goes ahead with the referendums and joins all four regions to Russia then Ukraine - and potentially its Western backers too - would, from a Russian perspective, be fighting against Russia itself.
That would raise the risk of a direct military confrontation between Russia and the NATO military alliance, a scenario that President Joe Biden has said could lead to World War Three, because NATO-members are supplying arms and giving intelligence to Ukraine.
As such, a rushed Russian move to formally annex another big chunk of Ukrainian territory would be a major escalation just days after potentially the most significant Russian battlefield defeat of the war in northeastern Ukraine.
Russia's nuclear doctrine allows the use of such weapons if it is attacked with nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, or if the Russian state faces an existential threat from conventional weapons.
While escalating the stakes of the confrontation, Putin could also announce additional steps. Russian stocks plunged to their lowest in a month on Tuesday as Moscow reignited martial law fears with new legislation that tightened penalties for military personnel.
Unless Ukraine agreed to stop fighting for its lost territory, then Russia would have to commit significant military forces to defend the newly annexed regions - which are still not fully under Russian control.
"Putin has made a bet on escalation," said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political analysis firm R.Politik.
"All this talk about immediate referendums is an absolutely unequivocal ultimatum from Russia to Ukraine and the West."
WHAT DOES UKRAINE SAY?
Ukraine said the threat of referendums was "naive blackmail" and a sign Russia was running scared.
"This is what the fear of defeat looks like. The enemy is afraid, and obfuscates primitively," said Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Ukraine says it will not rest until every Russian soldier is ejected from its territory. Kyiv says it will never accept Russian control over its territory and has called on the West to supply more and better arms to fight Russian forces.
WHAT HAPPENED IN CRIMEA?
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine's Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea.
After Russian forces on Feb. 27, 2014 took control of Crimea, which has an ethnic Russian majority and was transferred to Ukraine in Soviet times, a referendum on joining Russia was held on March 16.
Crimea’s leaders declared a 97% vote to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. Russia formally added Crimea on March 21, less than a month after invasion. Kyiv and the West said the referendum violated Ukraine’s constitution and international law.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
4 Ukrainian regions schedule votes this week to join Russia
By JON GAMBRELL
1 of 17
“That is why they fear those referendums so much in Kyiv and in the West,” Medvedev said. “That is why they must be held.”
Ukrainian analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the independent Penta Center think-tank based in Kyiv, said the Kremlin hopes the votes and the possibility of military escalation will raise the pressure from Western governments for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to start talks with Moscow.
The move “reflects the weakness, not the strength of the Kremlin, which is struggling to find levers to influence the situation that has increasingly spun out of its control,” he said.
The recapturing of territory, most notably in the northeastern Kharkiv region, has strengthened Ukraine’s arguments that its troops could deliver more stinging defeats to Russia with additional armament deliveries.
More heavy weaponry is on its way, with Slovenia promising 28 tanks and Germany pledging four additional self-propelled howitzers. More aid also is expected from Britain, already one of Ukraine’s biggest military backers after the U.S. British Prime Minister Liz Truss is expected to promise that in 2023, her government will “match or exceed” the 2.3 billion pounds ($2.7 billion) in military aid given to Ukraine this year.
The swiftness of the Ukrainian counteroffensive also saw Russian forces abandon armored vehicles and other weapons as they beat hasty retreats. Ukrainian forces are recycling the captured weaponry back into battle. A Washington-based think tank, The Institute for the Study of War, said abandoned Russian T-72 tanks are being used by Ukrainian forces seeking to push into Russian-occupied Luhansk.
In the counteroffensive’s wake, Ukrainian officials found hundreds of graves near the once-occupied city of Izium. Yevhenii Yenin, a deputy minister in Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry, told a national telecast that officials found many bodies “with signs of violent death.”
“These are broken ribs and broken heads, men with bound hands, broken jaws and severed genitalia,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s southern military command said its troops sank a Russian barge carrying troops and weapons across the Dnieper River near the Russian-occupied city of Nova Kakhovka. It offered no other details on the attack in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, which has been a major target in the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
In other developments:
— Ukraine’s presidential office said fresh shelling killed three civilians and injured 19 more in a 24-hour span.
— Moscow has likely moved its Kilo-class submarines from their station on the Crimean Peninsula to southern Russia over fears about them being struck by long-range Ukrainian fire, the British military said.
— McDonald’s restaurants in Kyiv began serving again for the first time since the invasion, offering only delivery service initially but marking a step of sorts back toward the life Ukrainians knew before the war.
By JON GAMBRELL
1 of 17
Local residents collect wood for heating from a destroyed school where Russian forces were based, in the recently retaken area of Izium, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. Residents of Izium, a city recaptured in a recent Ukrainian counteroffensive that swept through the Kharkiv region, are emerging from the confusion and trauma of six months of Russian occupation, the brutality of which gained worldwide attention last week after the discovery of one of the world's largest mass grave sites. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian-controlled regions of eastern and southern Ukraine announced plans Tuesday to start voting this week to become integral parts of Russia. The concerted and quickening Kremlin-backed efforts to swallow up four regions could set the stage for Moscow to escalate the war following Ukrainian successes on the battlefield.
The scheduling of referendums starting Friday in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions came after a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said the votes are needed and as Moscow is losing ground in the invasion it began nearly seven months ago, increasing pressure on the Kremlin for a stiff response.
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by Putin, said referendums that fold regions into Russia itself would make redrawn frontiers “irreversible” and enable Moscow to use “any means” to defend them.
The votes, in territory Russia already controls, are all but certain to go Moscow’s way but are unlikely to be recognized by Western governments who are backing Ukraine with military and other support that has helped its forces seize momentum on battlefields in the east and south.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced them as a sham and tweeted that “Ukraine has every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say.”
There was also swift international condemnation. Speaking in New York, where he is attending the U.N. General Assembly, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “It is very, very clear that these sham referendums cannot be accepted.”
Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics called for more sanctions against Russia and more weapons for Ukraine, tweeting: “We must say no to Russian blackmail.”
In Donetsk, part of Ukraine’s wider Donbas region that has been gripped by rebel fighting since 2014 and which Putin has set as a primary objective of the invasion, separatist leader Denis Pushilin said the vote will “restore historic justice” to the territory’s “long-suffering people.”
They “have earned the right to be part of the great country that they always considered their motherland,” he said.
In partly Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia, pro-Russia activist Vladimir Rogov said: “The faster we become part of Russia, the sooner peace will come.”
Pressure inside Russia for votes and from Moscow-backed leaders in Ukrainian regions that Moscow controls increased after a Ukrainian counteroffensive — bolstered by Western-supplied weaponry — that has recaptured large areas.
Former Kremlin speechwriter and Russian political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said on Facebook that Moscow-backed separatists appeared “scared that the Russians will abandon them” amid the Ukrainian offensive and forged ahead with referendum plans to force the Kremlin’s hand.
In another signal that Russia is digging in for a protracted and possibly ramped-up conflict, the Kremlin-controlled lower of house of parliament voted Tuesday to toughen laws against desertion, surrender and looting by Russian troops. Lawmakers also voted to introduce possible 10-year prison terms for soldiers refusing to fight. If approved, as expected, by the upper house and then signed by Putin, the legislation would strengthen commanders’ hands against failing morale reported among soldiers.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there are no prospects for a diplomatic settlement. Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008-2012, said on his messaging app channel that separatist region votes are important to protect their residents and would “completely change” Russia’s future trajectory.
“After they are held and the new territories are taken into Russia’s fold, a geopolitical transformation of the world will become irreversible,” Medvedev said.
“An encroachment on the territory of Russia is a crime that would warrant any means of self-defense,” he said, adding that Russia would enshrine the new territories in its constitution so no future Russian leader could hand them back.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian-controlled regions of eastern and southern Ukraine announced plans Tuesday to start voting this week to become integral parts of Russia. The concerted and quickening Kremlin-backed efforts to swallow up four regions could set the stage for Moscow to escalate the war following Ukrainian successes on the battlefield.
The scheduling of referendums starting Friday in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions came after a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said the votes are needed and as Moscow is losing ground in the invasion it began nearly seven months ago, increasing pressure on the Kremlin for a stiff response.
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by Putin, said referendums that fold regions into Russia itself would make redrawn frontiers “irreversible” and enable Moscow to use “any means” to defend them.
The votes, in territory Russia already controls, are all but certain to go Moscow’s way but are unlikely to be recognized by Western governments who are backing Ukraine with military and other support that has helped its forces seize momentum on battlefields in the east and south.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced them as a sham and tweeted that “Ukraine has every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say.”
There was also swift international condemnation. Speaking in New York, where he is attending the U.N. General Assembly, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “It is very, very clear that these sham referendums cannot be accepted.”
Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics called for more sanctions against Russia and more weapons for Ukraine, tweeting: “We must say no to Russian blackmail.”
In Donetsk, part of Ukraine’s wider Donbas region that has been gripped by rebel fighting since 2014 and which Putin has set as a primary objective of the invasion, separatist leader Denis Pushilin said the vote will “restore historic justice” to the territory’s “long-suffering people.”
They “have earned the right to be part of the great country that they always considered their motherland,” he said.
In partly Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia, pro-Russia activist Vladimir Rogov said: “The faster we become part of Russia, the sooner peace will come.”
Pressure inside Russia for votes and from Moscow-backed leaders in Ukrainian regions that Moscow controls increased after a Ukrainian counteroffensive — bolstered by Western-supplied weaponry — that has recaptured large areas.
Former Kremlin speechwriter and Russian political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said on Facebook that Moscow-backed separatists appeared “scared that the Russians will abandon them” amid the Ukrainian offensive and forged ahead with referendum plans to force the Kremlin’s hand.
In another signal that Russia is digging in for a protracted and possibly ramped-up conflict, the Kremlin-controlled lower of house of parliament voted Tuesday to toughen laws against desertion, surrender and looting by Russian troops. Lawmakers also voted to introduce possible 10-year prison terms for soldiers refusing to fight. If approved, as expected, by the upper house and then signed by Putin, the legislation would strengthen commanders’ hands against failing morale reported among soldiers.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there are no prospects for a diplomatic settlement. Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008-2012, said on his messaging app channel that separatist region votes are important to protect their residents and would “completely change” Russia’s future trajectory.
“After they are held and the new territories are taken into Russia’s fold, a geopolitical transformation of the world will become irreversible,” Medvedev said.
“An encroachment on the territory of Russia is a crime that would warrant any means of self-defense,” he said, adding that Russia would enshrine the new territories in its constitution so no future Russian leader could hand them back.
“That is why they fear those referendums so much in Kyiv and in the West,” Medvedev said. “That is why they must be held.”
Ukrainian analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the independent Penta Center think-tank based in Kyiv, said the Kremlin hopes the votes and the possibility of military escalation will raise the pressure from Western governments for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to start talks with Moscow.
The move “reflects the weakness, not the strength of the Kremlin, which is struggling to find levers to influence the situation that has increasingly spun out of its control,” he said.
The recapturing of territory, most notably in the northeastern Kharkiv region, has strengthened Ukraine’s arguments that its troops could deliver more stinging defeats to Russia with additional armament deliveries.
More heavy weaponry is on its way, with Slovenia promising 28 tanks and Germany pledging four additional self-propelled howitzers. More aid also is expected from Britain, already one of Ukraine’s biggest military backers after the U.S. British Prime Minister Liz Truss is expected to promise that in 2023, her government will “match or exceed” the 2.3 billion pounds ($2.7 billion) in military aid given to Ukraine this year.
The swiftness of the Ukrainian counteroffensive also saw Russian forces abandon armored vehicles and other weapons as they beat hasty retreats. Ukrainian forces are recycling the captured weaponry back into battle. A Washington-based think tank, The Institute for the Study of War, said abandoned Russian T-72 tanks are being used by Ukrainian forces seeking to push into Russian-occupied Luhansk.
In the counteroffensive’s wake, Ukrainian officials found hundreds of graves near the once-occupied city of Izium. Yevhenii Yenin, a deputy minister in Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry, told a national telecast that officials found many bodies “with signs of violent death.”
“These are broken ribs and broken heads, men with bound hands, broken jaws and severed genitalia,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s southern military command said its troops sank a Russian barge carrying troops and weapons across the Dnieper River near the Russian-occupied city of Nova Kakhovka. It offered no other details on the attack in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, which has been a major target in the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
In other developments:
— Ukraine’s presidential office said fresh shelling killed three civilians and injured 19 more in a 24-hour span.
— Moscow has likely moved its Kilo-class submarines from their station on the Crimean Peninsula to southern Russia over fears about them being struck by long-range Ukrainian fire, the British military said.
— McDonald’s restaurants in Kyiv began serving again for the first time since the invasion, offering only delivery service initially but marking a step of sorts back toward the life Ukrainians knew before the war.
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