War in Ukraine, day 219 | Putin signs annexation of four Ukrainian regions

(Moscow) Russian President Vladimir Putin signed Friday during a ceremony in the Kremlin the annexation of four regions of Ukraine that Moscow occupies totally or partially, calling on Kyiv to “immediately cease hostilities”.

The leaders of the breakaway Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk (east) and Zaporizhia and Kherson (south) signed the annexation documents alongside Mr Putin before an audience of government officials, deputies and senators, and other members of the Russian political elite.

They then joined their hands before chanting “Russia! in unison with the room, according to images from Russian television.

In his pre-annexation speech, Mr Putin called on Kyiv to “immediately cease firing, all hostilities and return to the negotiating table”.

“But the choice of residents of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson will not be discussed. It has been achieved and Russia will not betray it,” he warned.

Brushing aside Western criticism, Mr Putin added: “The people of Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia become our citizens forever”.

“People voted for our common future,” he assured after the organization of annexation “referendums” condemned by Kyiv and its allies.

“We will defend our land with all our strength and means,” Mr. Putin said again, as Russian officials repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend the new Ukrainian territories incorporated on Friday.

Deadly strike in Zaporizhia

The morning was bereaved by a particularly deadly strike on a column of civilian cars not far from the boundary between the Ukrainian zone and the occupied zone of the Zaporizhia region, one of the four territories to be incorporated by Russia.

At least 25 people were killed and 50 others injured in this strike, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, the two camps rejecting responsibility for the bombardment.

AFP journalists on the spot saw about fifteen cars with blown windows and at least three bodies of women on the ground, cases scattered on the ground. The strike hit the parking lot of a transit center for displaced people, about ten meters away.

Two kilometers from the city of Zaporizhia, under Ukrainian control, and a few tens of kilometers from the area occupied by the Russians, people were waiting here for permission to return to the territories under Russian control, a procedure which takes time.

Mr Zelensky called Russia a “terrorist” and “bloodthirsty scum” after the strike.

In the neighboring region of Kherson, which is also to be annexed on Friday, a Russian occupation official, Alexei Katerinitchev, was killed overnight in a Ukrainian strike on his home carried out using HIMARS systems provided by the States. States, according to another pro-Russian executive, Kirill Stremoussov.

” Never ”

The Russian capital is preparing for festivities, with restricted traffic on Friday, including a concert in the shadow of the Kremlin walls, at which Mr. Putin could make an appearance.

“It’s great that they have been accepted in Russia. It should have been done a long time ago, eight years ago, in fact,” during the first conflict between Kyiv and pro-Russian separatists, said Ildar Babayev, 38. Natalia Bodner, 37, believes that “it will bring nothing to our lives”.

In Ukraine, in Sloviansk, in the East, Valentina Glushchenko, 52, assures that she does not take into account “Putin’s barking”. “We will win,” she said.

The four regions will be officially annexed, after so-called regional referendums hastily organized at the end of September. The vote took place under the watch of armed soldiers and was called a “travesty” by Kyiv and its Western backers.

As a sign of this haste and of a certain disorganization, the Kremlin spokesman announced that he had to “clarify” whether Russia was annexing all of the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporijjia or only the parts it occupied.

Western leaders, for their part, have repeatedly insisted that they will “never” recognize the annexations and have promised new sanctions against Moscow.

Assault on Lyman

The UN Security Council is to vote Friday on a resolution condemning these “referendums”.

Claiming its control over these territories, Russia, which had already annexed Crimea, a peninsula in southern Ukraine, in 2014, threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend them.

On the front, the situation is deteriorating for the Russian forces, engaged in a battle for Lyman, a city in the Donetsk region (east) and an important railway hub, which is facing a Ukrainian assault.

The leader of the separatists in the Donetsk region Denis Pushilin admitted that the Russians were “partially surrounded” and no longer had “full control” of the neighboring localities of Drobychevé and Yampil.

Elsewhere on the ground, one person was killed and five injured in a Russian strike on the Dnipropetrovsk region (center) which destroyed a bus transport company. In that of Donetsk, eight people died in multiple bombardments, according to the morning report of the Ukrainian presidency.

Ukraine has already reconquered since the beginning of September most of the Kharkiv region, in the northeast, and recently taken over the Kupyansk railway junction.