Putin vows to win Ukraine war alongside the new four annexed Ukrainian regions.
In a pompous Kremlin ceremony, Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s annexation of a huge percentage of Ukraine, promising Moscow would prevail in its “special military operation” against Kyiv even as some of his troops faced the possibility of loss.
The greatest annexation in Europe since World War 2, announced by the Russian president, has been categorically rejected by Western nations and even several of Russia’s close allies.
It comes as Russian forces in one of the four regions being annexed face being encircled by Ukrainian troops after Putin ordered a massive mobilisation drive to get hundreds of thousands of Russian men to the front.
In one of the toughest anti-American speeches he has delivered in more than two decades in power, Putin signalled he was ready to continue a battle for a “greater historical Russia” using whatever tools he had at his disposal and slammed the West as neo-colonial and Satanist.
“Truth is on our side. Russia is with us!” Putin told his country’s political elite, who had gathered in one of the Kremlin’s grandest halls to watch what him sign documents annexing four Ukrainian regions.
He said that when the United States launched two atomic bombs in Japan in 1945, it created a precedent. However, he refrained from personally delivering new nuclear warnings against Ukraine, as he has done numerous times in recent weeks.
The 69-year-old leader chanted “Russia, Russia!” as he clasped the hands of the four Russian-backed officials he wants to oversee the annexed regions that Ukraine is attempting to reclaim.
Putin said that together, Russia and the four regions would defeat Ukraine.
Regarding the four Ukrainian regions that he said Russia was annexing, Putin said, “People living in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson region, and Zaporizhzhia region are becoming our compatriots forever.”
