Vladimir Putin will sign treaties today annexing territories in occupied Ukraine, the Kremlin has said, in a major escalation of Russia's seven-month-old war.
The president is expected to sign into law Russia's annexations of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, where it has held fake referendums in order to claim a mandate for the territorial takeovers. Putin has said he is ready to defend those territories using all available means, indicating he would be willing to resort to a nuclear strike to stop Ukraine's efforts to liberate its sovereign territory.
Putin is seen to be passing a point of no return that will prolong the war and scuttle even the remotest chance of negotiations by obliging Russia to fight in perpetuity for Ukrainian territory, some of which it does not currently control.
The signing of "treaties on the accession of territories into the Russian Federation" will take place at 3 pm in the Kremlin, the government spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said.
The news set off a fresh round of international condemnation. "Any decision to proceed with the annexation ... would have no legal value and deserves to be condemned," said Antonio Guterres, the UN's secretary general. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said Russia's votes were a sham and a "futile attempt to mask attempted land grab in Ukraine".
This story is from the September 30, 2022 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the September 30, 2022 edition of The Guardian.
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