Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday finalized the sanctioning of laws regulating the annexation of the equivalent of about 15% of Ukraine, the biggest territorial grab in Europe since World War II. Moscow had already annexed Crimea, 7% of its neighbor, without conflict in 2014
The Kremlin, however, continued without defining exactly which borders are foreseen in the absorption denounced as illegal abroad. The reason is Kiev’s advances in the Donetsk (east) and Kherson (south) regions. But he kept his tone defiant.
“Please read the decree [presidencial que foi convertido em lei e, depois, sancionado pelo próprio Putin]. In general, of course, it applies to the territory where the civil-military administration was operating at the time of access. [à Rússia]. I repeat: some territories will be retaken and we will continue to consult the population that wants to live in Russia,” she said.
Despite the spokesperson’s appeal, the texts of the four decrees signed by Putin on Friday (30) are far from clear. It is assumed that in the case of Donestk and Lugansk, the so-called Donbass (Don River basin), the borders are those established in 2014 by the self-proclaimed people’s republics that Moscow has now annexed.
In this case, it is the legal border of the Ukrainian oblasts (regions, in the complex territorial division of the former Soviet Union still valid) of Lugansk and Donetsk. Today, Russia occupies almost all of the former, where Kiev has been attacking, and about 60% of the latter. So Peskov goes back to the point he made last week: that the war is currently aimed at at least finishing capturing that area.
But things get more nebulous when dealing with Kherson and Zaporijia. In the first southern area, Russian control was almost complete, but there are Ukrainian armored infiltrations and the namesake capital is in a very exposed position, with the Dnieper River at its back.
It remains to be seen whether Kiev will want to lay siege to the civilian population there, or even whether the Russians will retreat to more defensible points, using the river as a border. In Zaporijia, the north of the region was never conquered by Moscow.
“There is no contradiction. They [os territórios] will be Russia’s forever,” Peskov maintains, seeming to sugarcoat the situation in the countryside. Legally, Moscow is in breach of the Budapest Memorandum, an agreement that recognized the borders of former Soviet Ukraine, signed in 1994.
Russia seems to be buying time for its criticized mobilization, attacked even by government propagandists, to have any effect. Contributing to this thesis is Moscow’s not-so-veiled threat to use nuclear weapons to defend its new territory: analysts see a chance of being just a bluff, even if Ukraine fears real action.
The Defense Ministry says it has already enlisted 200,000 of the 300,000 reservists it wants for combat, and that some could be in action as early as November.
The Russian actions were called by the head of Kiev’s presidential office, Andrii Iermak, “massive madness” and acts “of a terrorist country”. The United States and the European Union condemned them and drafted new economic sanctions against Moscow.
China, Putin’s main ally, never condemned the invasion and abstained from the UN Security Council session that would discuss the case, obstructed by the Kremlin’s veto power. Other members without such prerogative, such as India and Brazil, also abstained to insist on neutrality in favor of economic advantages.
In Europe, the central concern remains the energy war. According to the Danish government, state-owned giant Gazprom has started to divert gas sent to European countries through pipelines that pass through Ukraine, indicating that there could be a brutal cut in winter.
Around 30% of the European energy mix is made up of natural gas, and in 2021 40% of that was Russian. To complicate matters, the attack on the Nord Stream system, which was already practically inoperative on branch 1 and never got to work on branch 2, left only 1 of the 4 gas pipelines in working order — in the event that Europe gave in and asked Putin for gas, the which should only happen if military support for Kiev is reduced.
The explosions last week caused a large gas leak in the Baltic Sea, where the system linking Russia and Germany passes. Moscow insists that it was the victim of some rival state, and Europe only failed to name Putin as the culprit. But tensions have eased somewhat, and there are now negotiations over how to investigate the episode.
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