Awaiting convictions in the UN General Assembly tribune and with reports of losses of more occupied territories in its invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s Russia decided to accelerate the process of annexing areas of the neighboring country.
It was up to the former president and now Putin’s deputy on the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, to draw the motivation: “Invasion of Russian territory is a crime that allows us to use all forms of self-defense”, he said, when commenting on the requests of three pro-government administrators. Russia from occupied areas to hold referendums on annexation.
“The referendums will completely change Russia’s development vector for decades. And not just for our country. The geopolitical transformation of the world will be irreversible once the new territories are incorporated into Russia,” he wrote in a Telegram post.
In self-defense, Medvedev may be paving the way for the chief to change the current policy of not doing general mobilization, which has led to the loss of areas in Kharkiv (northeast) and seems to jeopardize the fringes of Lugansk, one of the two provinces of the Donbass ( east) that the Russians conquered in July.
At the extreme of the threat, the application of Russian nuclear doctrine, the use of atomic bombs in case of existential risks. World War III, in other words. The US alone has already committed to sending more than $15 billion worth of weapons to Kiev, and they have made a difference in the current offensive.
Receiving ambassadorial credentials, Putin advanced the speech that his chancellor, Sergei Lavrov, should make at the UN. He criticized what he considers the US hegemonic project, which “controls everything, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa”.
“Hegemony has worked in doing so for a long time, but it cannot go on forever, despite developments in Ukraine,” he said, somewhat cryptically and less bombastically than usual about the course of his war.
The anti-American speech is identical to that of his biggest partner and main strategic US rival, Xi Jinping’s China, whom Putin met last week, listening to “concerns” about the war but then increasing military cooperation between the countries. .
The roadmap for the Kremlin is ready and does not differ from the one already applied to Crimea, where there was no war in 2014, and even in the request for protection of the two self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donbass, one of the “casus belli” of the invasion in February, when Putin recognized.
On Monday (19), the local parliaments of Donetsk and Lugansk, the eastern provinces, agreed to speed up the organization of the referendum, despite opposition from the FSB (Federal Security Service, one of the successor agencies of the KGB) on grounds of insecurity.
This Tuesday (20), it was the turn of the occupation government of Kherson (south), another region under Ukrainian attack, this one much less successful than that of Kharkiv. As Vladimir Saldo, the local chief, said on Telegram, “Kherson will become a full entity of a united country,” he said. There, the Russians occupy about 95% of the territory.
In Lugansk, the occupation is almost total, except for some villages near the border with Kharkiv, but the situation on the ground is fluid. The biggest question is about the border that Russians should claim in Donetsk, whose eponymous provincial capital has been ruled by separatists since the civil war that started in 2014, in the wake of the annexation of Crimea, in turn a response by Putin to the fall of the pro-government. -Kremlin in Kiev.
In Donetsk, about 60% of the territory is in rebel and Russian hands, and Ukrainian forces have well-defended positions in the province. On Monday night, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in Kiev that Russian troops were “fleeing in panic” at various points on the battlefronts.
According to Saldo, the referendum will take place as soon as possible, and its estimated 20,000 soldiers will be incorporated into the Russian Armed Forces.
The Lugansk ambassador to Moscow, Rodion Mirochnik, even hinted at the legalistic veneer of the process: it would be submitted to the Shanghai Security Organization, the multinational entity created by China that hosted the Putin-Xi meeting, and to the BRICS countries, the bloc that unites Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
It is to be speculated what the reaction of the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government would be to such a request, given that he maintained a good relationship with Putin throughout the war and received Russian thanks for this, even though Brazil condemns the invasion itself. .
Predictably, the Duma (Russian lower house of Parliament) enthusiastically supported the initiative. Significantly, she also on Tuesday passed a law tightening the punishment regime for those who defect during combat situations or general mobilization — thus leaving another instrument ready for Putin should he change his policy, which in any case seems difficult given the unpopularity of such a move.
The Russian president is under pressure. More hard-line members of its elite have spoken out in favor of a wider and more destructive war, involving the numbers of soldiers needed for any victory — the failure to take Kiev in the first week of the conflict was due, among other things, to shortages. of troops.
This week’s moves seem to broaden the range available to the leader, who is betting on confrontation with the West to galvanize the support he continues to receive despite occasional criticism.
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