Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed the annexation of four Ukrainian territories under Moscow’s control, during a ceremony in the Kremlin during which he lambasted Westerners and called on Kyiv to lay down their arms.
• Read also: Ukraine to formally request ‘accelerated NATO membership’
• Read also: At least 23 dead in strike in southern Ukraine
Mr Putin arrived slightly late at St. George’s Hall in the Kremlin for his much-anticipated speech to members of the government, MPs, senators and other members of Russia’s political elite, as well as religious representatives.
After a speech lasting less than an hour, Mr Putin signed the annexation documents alongside the leaders of Ukraine’s breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk (east) and those occupied by Russian troops in Zaporizhia and Kherson (south).
The Russian president and the four pro-Russian leaders then joined their hands before chanting “Russia!” in unison with the room, according to the images broadcast on television. “A real historic moment,” commented the presenter of the Rossiya 24 channel.
In his speech, Mr Putin called on Kyiv to “immediately cease firing, all hostilities and return to the negotiating table”, despite the recent disappointments of Moscow troops, a pocket of which has been partially surrounded in the city since Friday. strategic Lyman (east).
He also denounced at length the West, which he accused of wanting at all costs to preserve a “neo-colonial system which allows it to parasitize and, in fact, plunder the whole world”. “They want to see us as a colony,” he further castigated.
He also accused the Anglo-Saxons of being behind the “explosions” which caused leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, built to transport Russian gas to Europe, an attack which he had already qualified Thursday “an act of international terrorism”.
“Illegal annexation”
These annexations come after seven months of Russian offensive in Ukraine and urgently organized “referendums” in the occupied regions, which have been denounced as “simulacra” by Kyiv and its allies, who have sworn to “never” recognize them. the results.
As a sign of this haste and of a certain disorganization, the Kremlin spokesman announced that he had to “clarify” whether Russia was annexing all of the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporijjia or only the parts it occupied.
Leaders of EU countries issued a statement on Friday “rejecting” and “condemning” this “illegal annexation”, accusing Moscow of putting “global security at risk”.
Sweeping the critics, Mr. Putin assured that he “did not aspire” to restore the USSR while launching: “The inhabitants of Lugansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhya become our citizens forever”.
The Russian capital is preparing for festivities on Friday, including a concert in the shadow of the Kremlin walls, at which Mr. Putin could make an appearance.
A crowd of a few thousand approached the iconic Red Square in the early evening with Russian flags, according to AFP journalists.
“It’s great that they have been accepted in Russia. It should have been done a long time ago, eight years ago, in fact”, during the first conflict between Kyiv and the pro-Russian separatists, Ildar Babayev, 38, told AFP. Natalia Bodner, 37, believes that “it will bring nothing to our lives”.
In Ukraine, in Sloviansk, in the East, Valentina Glushchenko, 52, assures that she does not take into account “Putin’s barking”. “We will have the victory”, she wants to believe.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is due to hold a meeting of his Security Council to find “solutions” to the situation.
Strike on civilians
Claiming its control over these territories, Russia, which had already annexed Crimea, a peninsula in southern Ukraine, in 2014, threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend them.
The UN Security Council is to vote Friday on a resolution condemning these “referendums”.
On the front, the forces of Moscow were however in difficulty in Lyman, an important railway junction in the East which is “partially surrounded” by Ukrainian troops, according to the pro-Russian separatist official Denis Pushilin.
Friday morning was bereaved by a particularly deadly Russian strike on a column of civilian cars not far from the border between the Ukrainian zone and the occupied zone of the Zaporizhia region, one of the four territories to be incorporated by Moscow .
At least 25 people were killed and 50 others injured in this strike, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, the two camps rejecting responsibility for the bombardment.
AFP journalists on the spot saw about fifteen cars with blown windows and at least three bodies of women on the ground, cases scattered on the ground. The strike hit the parking lot of a transit center for displaced people, located about ten meters away.
Two kilometers from the city of Zaporizhia, under Ukrainian control, and a few tens of kilometers from the area occupied by the Russians, people were waiting here for permission to return to the territories under Russian control, a procedure that takes time.
Mr Zelensky called Russia a “terrorist” and “bloodthirsty scum” after the strike.