Putin signs annexation decrees

Biden, Zelenskyy denounce Russian claim over 4 regions

People in Sevastopol, Crimea, watch on a large screen Friday as Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech from the Kremlin in Moscow after a ceremony to sign the treaties for four regions of Ukraine to join Russia. More photos at arkansasonline.com/101moscow/.
(AP)
People in Sevastopol, Crimea, watch on a large screen Friday as Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech from the Kremlin in Moscow after a ceremony to sign the treaties for four regions of Ukraine to join Russia. More photos at arkansasonline.com/101moscow/. (AP)


Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees Friday to declare four Ukrainian regions part of Russia as the Kremlin seeks to solidify its tenuous hold over Ukrainian territory through a widely denounced illegal annexation.

"This is the will of millions of people," he said. "This is their right, their inalienable right."

The Russian leader spoke in St. George's Hall at the Grand Kremlin Palace -- the same place where he declared in March 2014 that the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea was part of Russia.

Hundreds of Russian members of Parliament and regional governors sat in the audience for Putin's speech, as well as many of his Cabinet ministers and the four Russian-imposed leaders of the occupied Ukrainian regions.

Ukraine and its Western partners have condemned Russia's annexations of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as illegal and the "referendums" that preceded them -- purporting to show local support for joining Russia -- as fraudulent.

President Joe Biden was quick to denounce Putin's actions to annex the four territories, saying they "have no legitimacy" and adding that "the United States will always honor Ukraine's internationally recognized borders."

As Putin spoke, leaders in the European Union issued a statement noting that they "firmly reject and unequivocally condemn" the annexation.

Putin referred to "the ruling circles of the so-called West" as "the enemy," a word he rarely uses in reference to the West.

"Not only do Western elites deny national sovereignty and international law," he said in the 37-minute address. "Their hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid."

He reeled off Western military actions stretching from the British Opium War in China in the 19th century to Allied firebombings of Germany and the Vietnam and Korean wars.

But Putin offered few new details on the matter that is now perhaps of greatest concern in Western capitals -- whether, and at what point, he may be prepared to use weapons of mass destruction to force Ukraine to capitulate. The United States, he said, was the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war.

Without saying so directly, Putin hinted that the role of nuclear weapons in war is on his mind. He then added: "By the way, they created a precedent."

Ukraine has vowed not to recognize the illegal annexation, pledging to retake all territory that has been captured by Russia.

"Russia will not get a new territory of Ukraine," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his overnight address. "Russia will annex itself to the catastrophe that it has brought to the occupied territory of our country."

Friday's events include a celebration on Red Square. Official ratification of the decrees will happen next week, said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's spokesperson.

The moves follow staged referendums held in occupied territory during a war in defiance of international law. Much of the provinces' civilian populations have fled fighting since the war began in February and people who did vote sometimes did so at gunpoint.

Even so, the annexations serve the Kremlin's interest. Russia only partly occupies the four provinces, and Putin and his top aides have asserted that Moscow will then be defending its own territory from attacks by Ukraine, rather than the other way around.

Putin said the residents of the four regions would become Russian citizens "forever." He insisted that Russia's position on annexing the four territories was nonnegotiable, adding that the country would defend them "with all the forces and means at our disposal."

"I call on the Kyiv regime to immediately cease fire and all military action," he said, and for the Ukrainian government "to return to the negotiating table."

"But we will not discuss the decision of the people of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson," he went on, referring to the four Ukrainian regions being annexed. "It has been made. Russia will not betray it."

Cementing Russia's hold over the two eastern regions, an area collectively known as the Donbas that Putin considers his primary prize, could allow the Kremlin to declare a victory at a time when hawks in Russia have criticized Russian forces for not doing enough to prevent recent breakneck gains by Ukrainian forces in the south and northeast of the country.

But Putin nevertheless faces huge hurdles to reassert his control over an increasingly chaotic war, including a recent draft of hundreds of thousands of civilians into military service that has encountered opposition in Russia.

RUSSIAN VETO

At the United Nations, Russia vetoed a resolution Friday that would have condemned its referendums in four Ukrainian regions as illegal, declared them invalid and urged all countries not to recognize any annexation of the territory claimed by Moscow.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 10-1 with China, India, Brazil and Gabon abstaining.

The resolution would also have demanded an immediate halt to Russia's "full-scale unlawful invasion of Ukraine" and the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all its military forces from Ukraine.

In the event of a Russian veto, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said before the vote that the U.S. and Albania, who sponsored the resolution, will take it to the 193-member General Assembly where there are no vetoes "and show that the world is still on the side of sovereignty and protecting territorial integrity."

Thomas-Greenfield said the results of the "sham" referendums on whether the regions wanted to join Russia were "predetermined in Moscow and everybody knows it."

"They were held behind the barrel of Russian guns," she said.

Adding that "the sacred principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity" at the heart of the U.N. Charter must be defended, she said, "All of us understand the implications for our own borders, our own economies and our own countries if these principles are tossed aside."

"Putin miscalculated the resolve of the Ukrainians," Thomas-Greenfield said. "The Ukrainian people have demonstrated loud and clear: They will never accept being subjugated to Russian rule."

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia defended the referendums, claiming that more than 100 international observers from Italy, Germany, Venezuela and Latvia who observed the voting recognized the outcomes as legitimate.

"The results of the referendums speak for themselves. The residents of these regions do not want to return to Ukraine. They have made an informed and free choice in favor of our country," he said.

Nebenzia added: "There will be no turning back as today's draft resolution would try to impose."

He accused Western nations on the council of "openly hostile actions," saying they reached "a new low" by putting forward a resolution condemning a council member and forcing a Russian veto so they can "wax lyrical."

Under a resolution adopted earlier this year, Russia must defend its veto before the General Assembly in the coming weeks.

NEW U.S. SANCTIONS

The Biden administration is enacting a round of new sanctions aimed at further crippling Russia's defense and technology sectors and other industries, as well as cutting off more top officials and their families from global commerce, to punish Moscow for its efforts to annex parts of eastern Ukraine.

The Treasury and Commerce departments will impose sanctions and export controls on any companies, institutions or people who "provide political or economic support to Russia for its purported annexation," White House officials said Friday.

"I urge all members of the international community to reject Russia's illegal attempts at annexation and to stand with the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes," Biden said in a statement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a separate statement that "the United States unequivocally rejects Russia's fraudulent attempt to change Ukraine's internationally recognized borders."

As part of the broad announcement, the Treasury Department stated that it is enacting sanctions against 14 international companies for supporting supply chains of the Russian military.

The Treasury Department is putting nearly 300 members of the Parliament on a sanctions list, along with Elvira Sakhipzadovna Nabiullina, the governor of the Central Bank of Russia; Olga Nikolaevna Skorobogatova, the first deputy governor of the bank; Alexander Valentinovich Nova, a deputy prime minister; and relatives of members of the National Security Council. U.S. agencies had already put Russian security council members on lists.

The State Department also is imposing visa restrictions on more than 900 Russian officials.

The Commerce Department is adding 57 entities from Russia and the Crimea region of Ukraine, which the Russian military forcibly occupied in 2014, to what it calls the entity list, which limits commercial transactions. Officials also plan to try to ensure that companies outside the United States are restricted in the business they can do with those on the list.

On Friday, Britain's Foreign Office announced a series of sweeping new sanctions on key services and placed a ban on 700 goods "that are crucial to Russia's industrial and technological capabilities."

NATO APPLICATION

Zelenskyy responded to Russia's claims to have annexed four Ukrainian provinces by announcing that Ukraine is applying for membership in NATO.

"We are taking our decisive step by signing Ukraine's application for accelerated accession to NATO," Zelenskyy said in a statement posted on the presidential website.

He said Ukraine was cooperating closely with NATO and argued that Ukraine's army has already helped secure alliance members in Europe against Russian aggression by inflicting battlefield defeats on the Russian army in Ukraine.

"It is in Ukraine that the fate of democracy in the confrontation with tyranny is being decided," he said.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine's application could be fast-tracked similarly to the applications of Sweden and Finland.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine, like every democracy in Europe, has the right to apply for membership in the alliance, but he cautioned that a decision about accepting a new member is taken by all 30 allied countries by consensus.

NATO's immediate focus is to continue providing support to Ukraine, so it can "defend itself against the Russian brutal invasion," Stoltenberg said.

Ukraine's desire to join the alliance has long been a source of conflict with Russia, which sees the eastward expansion of NATO as an existential threat. President Vladimir Putin has said the expansion of NATO would leave Russia hemmed in with Western missiles on its doorstep, and it appeared to be one of the pretexts for his invasion.

In February, Zelenskyy stressed his country's ambition to be admitted into NATO, an aspiration fixed in Ukraine's constitution since 2019. But by March, Zelenskyy backed down.

"We know it's possible," Zelenskyy said in his statement, pointing to the recent examples of Finland and Sweden undertaking the accession process.

"This is fair," he added. "This is also fair for Ukraine."

Ukraine would benefit from NATO's defining credo, which states "an armed attack" against any member is considered an attack against them all. But, as an alliance predicated on the doctrine of mutual defense, it would be highly unlikely to admit a country ensnared in war.

France and Germany, among others, have in the past opposed or been skeptical of Ukraine's inclusion. Analysts say Biden, wary of further U.S. military commitments, has also been reluctant to support Ukraine's membership in the past.

Even if Ukraine could overcome those hurdles, it could face other challenges.

NATO observes an "open-door policy" that states any European nation that wants to join can do so if it meets certain requirements.

Among them is demonstrating a commitment to democracy, individual liberty and support for the rule of law. While Ukrainian leaders say their country meets that threshold, some U.S. and European officials have argued otherwise.

Experts warned that Ukraine's NATO membership process could take at least several months, even years.

"It will take time," said Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former NATO secretary-general. "Until it happens, Ukraine needs cast-iron security guarantees from its allies."

Information for this article was contributed by Anton Troianovski, Andrew E. Kramer, Dan Bilefsky, Edward Wong and Michael Crowley of The New York Times and by Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press.



 Gallery: Ceremonial annexation of Ukraine territories



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