Russian president Vladimir Putin announced in a speech on Friday that Russia would be formally annexing several regions of Ukraine that it continues to occupy.
Since invading its western neighbor in February, Russian forces have suffered heavy losses, and have more recently been pushed back toward their own border after a Ukrainian counter-offensive found success.
In spite of the recent military setbacks, Putin asserted that “the citizens of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhia, and Kherson have become our citizens forever,” directly addressing Ukraine’s government and “its real masters in the West.”
The Russian leader said he was open to negotiation, but noted that those regions would not be handed back to Ukraine, saying “we shall defend our territory with all means available to us.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has slammed the land grab as the fruit of “sham referenda,” declaring in a statement that “the results were orchestrated in Moscow and do not reflect the will of the people of Ukraine. The United States does not, and will never, recognize the legitimacy or outcome of these sham referenda or Russia’s purported annexation of Ukrainian territory.”