Moscow (agencies)
The Kremlin announced that Russia will officially annex 4 Ukrainian regions controlled by its forces during a grand ceremony that will be held in Moscow today. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the annexation process would be made official at a ceremony in the Kremlin. He added that the Russian president will deliver an “important” speech during the event.
“Tomorrow in St. George’s Hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace there will be a signing ceremony on the annexation of the new territories to Russia,” Peskov told reporters.
The leaders of the four regions appointed by the Kremlin met in the Russian capital yesterday, a day after the pro-Moscow authorities appealed directly to Putin to annex the territories to Russia.
Their requests to the Kremlin, which were issued almost simultaneously, came after the four regions announced that their residents unanimously supported the move, in the framework of hastily organized referendums that Kyiv and the West considered “illegal, fraudulent and invalid.”
After the results of the referendums, Ukraine considered that the only appropriate Western response would be to impose more sanctions on Russia, and to provide Ukrainian forces with more weapons to be able to continue their progress.
“Ukraine cannot tolerate any Russian attempts to grab any part of our land,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Wednesday.
The four regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia in the south, Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, constitute an important land corridor between Russia and Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
The five regions together represent about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, and government forces have been recapturing several sites for weeks.
The Ukrainian army is advancing, especially in the Kharkiv region in the east, and is regaining lands in Donetsk, while military observers indicate that it is close to recovering Lyman.
The Russian move to annex Ukraine was met with an American announcement of a new aid package that includes weapons and supplies valued at $1.1 billion, including high-precision missile systems, ammunition, armored vehicles and radars.
In turn, the European Commission announced new sanctions targeting Russian exports worth 7 billion euros, and set a ceiling on oil prices, and expanded the list of travel bans and asset freezes.
Emergency meeting of Ukrainian army chiefs
Yesterday, a spokesman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that he had called an emergency meeting of senior military and security leaders today.
Spokesman Serhii Nikiforov made the announcement on Facebook after the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin would sign official memoranda today to annex four Ukrainian regions partly controlled by Russia, following what Kyiv described as “sham” referendums organized by Moscow at gunpoint.
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