Russia announces biggest annexation in Europe since WWII

The Kremlin confirmed that President Vladimir Putin will sign this Friday (30) the annexation of four regions he partially occupies in Ukraine, equivalent to 15% of the territory of the neighbor invaded seven months ago.

The ceremony will take place in Moscow at 15:00 (9:00 in Brasília), and the Red Square is already equipped with screens and banners alluding to the event. It is the largest absorption of territory by force in Europe since World War II, and the first on the continent since Turkey invaded northern Cyprus in 1974.

The two self-proclaimed republics of Donbass (Donetsk and Lugansk, in the east) and the provinces of Zaporijia and Kherson (southern Ukraine) will be incorporated into Russia, after referendums organized in an almost emergency manner by the occupation authorities. It is an area the size of Portugal or Santa Catarina.

As with the peaceful annexation of Crimea in 2014, when Putin mutilated his neighbor and spurred civil war in Donbass to prevent the government that toppled his ally from the presidency in Kiev from joining Western structures, there will be no international recognition save for a few. Moscow’s side allies (six countries and four Russian autonomous enclaves).

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he will not cease fighting until he regains all of his territory. He was supported by the US and its allies in NATO (Western military alliance). New sanctions against Russia are being prepared.

On Putin’s side, although without recognizing something that the UN will not approve, is mainly China – a large portion of the world, India and Brazil included, condemn the war but do not support the isolation of Moscow to continue doing business with the Russians. .

The annexation and mobilization of at least 300,000 reservists, met with great anger in Russia, constitutes Putin’s sharpest turn in the war. On Wednesday (28), Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov announced a minimum goal for Russia for the first time: to complete the conquest of Donetsk, which has about 40% of territory still in Kiev’s hands.

This spells out both a map to the end of the conflict and Putin’s problems: the failure to overthrow Zelensky with a regime-decapitating coup early in the war and the losses of occupied areas in Kharkiv (northeast) earlier this month, largely for lack of enough troops.

Now, the Russian president is annexing areas that are not entirely under his control, especially in Donetsk — the others are almost all under his forces. Moscow’s hope is to create a fait accompli, as in Crimea, which also lacks UN recognition but is treated like the Russian historic area it always was.

It’s harder. While in Donbass the pro-Russian separatists had already controlled much of the region since 2014, in the south there was a “manu militari” conquest that Europe had not seen since the 1930s and 1940s on this scale. These are Russian-speaking areas, but they are much more heterogeneous from a linguistic point of view than the Crimea and the eastern end of the Donbass.

Be that as it may, Putin has continued, either to find an end to his war or to prolong it indefinitely with the new status and reinforcements that will slowly arrive from his unpopular mobilization. Fighting continues at different points along the 1,000km front between the countries, and Zelensky said there would be a “tough response” to annexation.

With what nationalists called the New Russia established, linking Donbass to Crimea by land, the president now uses his nuclear might to threaten the West and Kiev: by Moscow doctrine, any attack, even a conventional one, that is perceived as an existential risk for the State can be answered with atomic fire.

While many analysts see this as a bluff, the idea is growing that Putin could employ a low-powered, tactical artifact as a warning. This would have unpredictable consequences, given the risk of escalation.

‘Moment 1938’

In practice, Putin may have created a “1938 moment” for NATO. That year, Adolf Hitler demanded the annexation of ethnic German areas of what was then Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, suggesting that he would stop their expansion there. Europe acquiesced and avoided war, but the Nazi dictator did not stop, leading to world conflict the following year.

Obviously, Putin is not Hitler and the world context is different: a war with NATO would destroy Russia and the world as we know it, to begin with. But an eventual proposal by the Kremlin to freeze the conflict after having eaten 22% of the neighbor, including the 7% represented by Crimea, would put a not very different moral dilemma on the table.

The annexations, after all, make Ukraine unfeasible as a state, a presumed initial objective of Putin, who did not want to see NATO and the European Union on his longest border. It can be argued that he achieved this indirectly, with the West arming Kiev and directly with Finland joining the military club.

In fact, however, Ukrainian integration with the Western framework is blocked. European blocs are refractory to members with territorial issues.

The Russian uses in its favor not only the nuclear pressure, but mainly the energetic one. The arrival of the European winter is accompanied by a reduction in the supply of Russian gas to the continent, a bet on the wear of governments towards their populations, affected by high inflation and possible rationing. This could, on Russian accounts, weaken support for Kiev.

In Russia, the mobilization continues with daily incidents, but fewer protests than a week ago, when it was announced. On Thursday, the Finnish government announced the closure of the last European Union border open to Russians, saying the 17,000 neighbors who entered its territory to evade conscription are a security risk.