President Vladimir V. Putin plans to announce on Friday that about 40,000 square miles east and south of Ukraine will become part of Russia – a merger widely condemned by the West, but a signal to saw Russian leaders ready to raise the stakes in the seven-month-old war.
Mr Putin is expected to give a “massive” speech, his spokesman said. He will likely downplay his military’s struggles in Ukraine and increase dissent at home. He will likely ignore worldwide accusations of discredited referendums being held in occupied Ukraine on joining Russia, where some are made to vote by gun.
Here’s what we know:
What is Russia proposing?
Russia is proposing to annex four provinces – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizka and Kherson – in southern and eastern Ukraine, where intense fighting continues. Moscow rushed to implement the plan after a humiliating defeat on the battlefield forced the Russian Army to leave another Kharkiv province in early September and the Ukrainian advance appeared to be rallying forces.
The Kremlin plans to declare the land where battles are being fought in all four regions as Russian territory and insist that it is defending, not attacking, in the war in Ukraine – and thus the It is perfectly reasonable to use any military means necessary. concealed nuclear threat. The annexation of the provinces will be used as a rationale for bringing Ukrainian men living there to fight other Ukrainians in the war, helping to resolve the shortage of troops in the Russian Army.
Why is the international community protesting?
The United States, European allies and many other countries oppose Russia’s unruly actions, arguing that allowing a country to capture new territory militarily would set a destabilizing precedent. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, an article published by Council on Foreign Relations observed that Russia, a member of the United Nations, violated Treaty of National Unitythis requires UN member states not to “use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.
Ukraine’s Western allies argue that the referendums supposedly showing support for reunification with Russia are a sham, as some residents of the occupied regions are forced to vote. with guns and a large part of the population fled as internally displaced people or refugees. The final talismans can also be easily counterfeited.
How much land do the Russians control in the regions?
Much of the territory that Russia is willing to claim as its territory is already occupied by the Russian military. Russia has taken over and established client states that control about a third of the two provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk, in a war that began in 2014. Its troops have advanced into two other provinces, Zaporizka and Kherson. , during the invasion that began in February.
The lines of battle changed fiercely, see-saw fighting for seven months of the war, with Russia virtually losing ground. The Russian military currently controls most of the Luhansk and Kherson regions and about half of the Zaporizka and Donetsk regions. Thousands of square miles of territory and hundreds of cities, towns and villages that Russia is ready to claim as its own are now firmly under Ukrainian control in the Donetsk and Zaporizka regions, including the capital of a province, the city of Zaporizhzhia.
How did Ukraine react?
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and his ministers and commanders say they will continue the fight to expel the Russian Army from Ukraine, regardless of whether Moscow calls parts of their country Russia or not.
What is the process and what happens next?
The Kremlin is using beauty pageants and demonstrating compliance with Russian legal procedures to give the merger a stamp of legitimacy. A rally is planned on Red Square on Friday to commemorate. Delegate leaders of four provinces have come to Moscow and urged Mr. Putin to accept their regions as part of Russia. If the process follows a pattern set in 2014 when Russia annexed another Ukrainian region, Crimea, Putin would submit a draft law to the Russian parliament proposing to expand the country’s borders.
The constitutional court will then consider the proposal, and both houses vote on it. No surprise: All members of Congress are loyal to Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin will then sign the law of accession and claim the new territory.
