Referendums

Kremlin says annexation and retreat are not a contradiction amid Ukrainian successes

Putin signs annexation documents
Russian forces battle counter-offensive
Putin appoints officials to run regions
Kremlin: the territories will be returned

LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – As President Vladimir Putin completed paperwork for the annexation of four regions of Ukraine on Wednesday, the Kremlin said there was no contradiction between Russian retreats and Putin’s vow that they would always be part of Russia.

In the biggest expansion of Russian territory in at least half a century, Putin signed laws admitting the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), Kherson region and Zaporizhzhia region into Russia.

The conclusion of the legalities of the annexation of up to 18% of Ukrainian territory came as Russian forces battled to halt Ukrainian counter-offensives within it, especially north of Kherson and west of Luhansk.

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Asked if there was a contradiction between Putin’s rhetoric and the reality of retreat on the ground, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “There is no contradiction whatsoever. They will be with Russia forever and they will be returned.”

The wording of the laws is unclear about what exact borders Russia is claiming for the annexed territories and Peskov declined to give clear guidance.

“Certain territories will still be returned and we will continue to consult with the population that expresses a desire to live with Russia,” Peskov said.

The contrast between a set of defeats on the battlefield and lofty language from the Kremlin about Russia’s might have raised concerns within the Russian elite about the conduct of the war.

Such is the depth of feeling over the retreats that two Putin allies publicly scolded the military top brass about the failings.

ANNEXATION

Russia declared the annexations after holding what it called referendums in occupied areas of Ukraine. Western governments and Kyiv said the votes breached international law and were coercive and non-representative.

More than seven months into a war that has killed tens of thousands and triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis, Russia’s most basic aims are still not achieved.

The areas that are being annexed are not all under control of Russian forces and Ukrainian forces have recently driven them back.

Together with Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, Putin’s total claim amounts to more than 22% of Ukrainian territory, though the exact borders of the four regions he is annexing are still yet to be finally clarified.

Moscow, which recognised Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, will never give the regions back, Putin said on Friday at a grand Kremlin treaty-signing ceremony which brought the partially controlled regions into Russia.

Russia’s parliament said people living in the annexed regions would be granted Russian passports, the Russian Central Bank would oversee financial stability and the Russian rouble would be the official currency.

In justifying the Feb. 24 invasion, Putin said that Russian speakers in Ukraine had been persecuted by Ukraine which, he said, the West was trying to use to undermine Russian security.

Ukraine and its Western backers say that Putin has no justification for what they say is an imperial-style land grab. Kyiv denies Russian speakers were persecuted.

Now Putin casts the war as a battle for Russia’s survival against the United States and its allies, which he says want to destroy Russia and grab its vast natural resources.

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Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Advancing Ukrainian Troops Find Nearly Empty Towns Destroyed by Fighting

Credit…Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Ukraine, fresh from a string of victories in the northeast, is now poised at the gateway to the eastern Donbas region and may have its best opportunity yet to dislodge Russian forces that expanded their control over the area after brutal combat this summer. Lysychansk, which only three months ago fell to the Russians in a demoralizing setback for Kyiv, could be the next major city in Ukraine’s sights.

That a battle to retake Lysychansk is even conceivable shows just how much the tables have turned in the east in the few weeks since Ukraine launched a surprise counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region. The relative speed of its victories is a marked contrast to Russia’s grinding assault over the summer in Donbas.

“The offensive movement of our army and all our defenders continued,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a bullish speech overnight, in which he said that 450 settlements in Kharkiv had been recaptured. “There are new liberated settlements in several regions.”

“Fierce fighting continues in many areas of the front,” he said.

Over the weekend, Ukraine reclaimed the town of Lyman, a strategic rail hub in the north of Donetsk, one of two territories that make up Donbas, and has continued to press east toward Lysychansk.

To seize Lysychansk and its sister city of Sievierodonetsk — both of which lie in northern Luhansk, the other territory that makes up Donbas — Russia pounded Ukrainian forces with artillery for weeks before street-by-street fighting eventually forced Ukraine’s withdrawal. Before Lyman fell, Ukrainian soldiers gradually encircled the town, and it fell last week after just days of intense combat.

Analysts point to Ukraine’s success in cutting off Russian supply routes as key to its momentum. As Russia was pushed out of Kharkiv last month, it lost control of its rail hub in the city of Izium, making it much harder for Moscow to resupply its forces farther south in Donbas and leaving them vulnerable.

Russia announced a surprise military call-up last month, and the country’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, said on Telegram on Tuesday that Moscow had drafted more than 200,000 troops of a planned 300,000. Although they have had little time for training, new troops from the recent mobilization have begun arriving in Ukraine, the Defense Ministry said on Monday.

Ukrainian soldiers have encountered hungry, poorly outfitted Russian troops, some with little weaponry to defend themselves.

Russia’s military is likely to be faced with a decision about whether to shift resources from other parts of the front to slow Ukraine’s advance or risk losing more ground in Donbas. Some of the nearest Russian reinforcements are roughly 25 miles southeast of Lyman, around the Ukrainian-held city of Bakhmut. The Wagner Group, an infamous paramilitary unit that reports directly to the Kremlin, has battered the Ukrainian defenders there but failed to seize the city.

But the question remains how long Ukrainian momentum can last. In recent days, some Ukrainian soldiers in Kharkiv Province have spoken of exhaustion after weeks of nonstop fighting.

Ben Barry, a senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said that the advance would most likely reach a “culminating point” after which the offensive would be difficult to sustain because troops would need to be rotated and resupplied.

Ukraine’s gains have not eased the danger to civilians, as fighting continued to produce casualties. A convoy of people fleeing Svatove, in Luhansk, was attacked in recent days and 24 people, including 13 children, were killed, the Ukrainian authorities said. And on Monday, Russian shellfire at a hospital in the Kupiansk district of the Kharkiv region killed a doctor and wounded two nurses, according to the head of its military administration, Oleh Syniehubov.

Russia’s battlefield losses have come even as Moscow claims that four Ukrainian regions where fierce fighting is continuing are now part of Russia, a move that has been met with widespread international derision.

Tass, a Russian state news agency, reported on Tuesday that the country’s upper house of Parliament, the Federation Council, had approved a law to annex Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as two provinces in southern Ukraine, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is likely to sign the law, which follows referendums in the provinces denounced as a sham by Ukraine and its Western partners.

Mr. Zelensky said on Tuesday that, given “Russia’s attempt to annex territories,” he had approved a decision of the country’s security council on the “impossibility of holding negotiations” with Mr. Putin.

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg

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Russian Disarray on Display as Ukraine’s Forces Advance on Two Fronts

Credit…Nicole Tung for The New York Times

LYMAN, Ukraine — In front of the mayor’s office in Lyman lay a heap of Russian propaganda posters, apparently freshly torn down and partially burned in a fire that went out in a thin fall drizzle on Sunday.

Decorated in the white, blue and red colors of the Russian flag, they were soggy from the rain. One explained the significance of Russian state symbols, the Russian flag and national anthem. “The national anthem of Russia is loved in our country,” a partially burned poster read.

A day after Ukrainian forces retook control of Lyman, a strategic railway hub in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a picture began to emerge of the destruction left behind by fleeing Russian soldiers who had occupied the city for months. In a hasty withdrawal, they abandoned official documents, military vehicles and the bodies of their comrades.

After weeks of fierce fighting, Russian forces retreated from Lyman on Saturday, just one day after President Vladimir V. Putin illegally declared the surrounding region to be part of Russia citing what Ukraine and its Western allies have called sham referendums in territories partly under Russian control.

The intense battle for the city was evident on Sunday afternoon. Whole city blocks were panoramic scenes of collapsed brick and corrugated tin roofing. A local bakery, Seagul, was reduced to a heap of rubble. Its bread trucks were still parked in a lot waiting for morning distributions that wouldn’t come.

Credit…Nicole Tung for The New York Times

About 5,000 of the pre-war population of 22,000 remained in Lyman, the police said.

“Look at the destroyed houses,” said Roman Plakhaniv, a lieutenant in the Kramatorsk district police force, who arrived on Sunday to patrol the city. “This was a nice, normal town. People from another country came and destroyed it.”

Signs of Russia’s plans to put down roots were abundant. Inside city hall were notices explaining how to apply for building permits under the occupation authority and with phone numbers to call to apply for a Russian pension. A stamped and signed document left on a table announced “the creation of the committee for reviewing controversial questions in distributing social assistance.” It was formed on Sept. 9.

Copies of a newspaper called Donetsk Republic were scattered about on the floor. An edition dated Sept. 15 ran an article under the headline, “Defense of the Republic and Borders of Russia” — apparently intended to tamp down worry as Ukraine’s counteroffensive gained ground.

“The President of Russia Vladimir V. Putin announced that in the course of the special operation Russia is not losing military strength and will defend its sovereignty,” the article explained.

In one office was a poster emblazoned with a Z, a symbol of Russia’s invasion, that said, “We don’t abandon our own.”

The only accessible road into Lyman is muddy and rutted, crossing a pontoon bridge over the roiling water of the Oskil River, which the Russian military had briefly tried to maintain as a defensive barrier last month, before falling back farther.

Dense pine forest surrounding the town had slowed and frustrated both sides in the fighting, and now show signs of the ferocity of the artillery battles in severed branches scattered along the road. Whole villages along the route are in ruins.

At one point, the road into town passed the remnants of what appeared to be a Ukrainian attack on Russian soldiers trying to flee the city in a civilian van. The vehicle’s doors were open and sleeping bags, pads, military coats, rations, shoes and other supplies had spilled out.

Nearby, on the side of the road, were anti-tank mines and the bodies of half a dozen Russian soldiers. A line of Ukrainian military trucks rumbled by, as a demining team checked the bodies for boobytraps, using ropes to tug and jostle them from a distance in case they exploded.

Asked how the Russians had died, one of the soldiers on the demining team shrugged. “They came to a foreign land,” he said.

— Andrew E. Kramer

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Russia to Push Ahead With Land Grab in Ukraine After Sham Votes

Credit…Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters

The Kremlin announced that it would hold a ceremony on Friday to begin absorbing four Ukrainian territories, pressing ahead with a widely condemned annexation effort even as Ukrainian forces gain ground in some of those areas.

President Vladimir V. Putin will deliver a “voluminous” speech, his spokesman said on Thursday, seeking to ignore his military’s struggles in Ukraine, rising domestic dissent and worldwide denunciations of referendums in the occupied regions, where some were made to vote at gunpoint.

Even though Russia has failed to fully control the four territories it seeks to annex despite months of bloody fighting, the Kremlin was preparing a show designed to present a sheen of legitimacy to its illegal takeover. The authorities in Moscow put up billboards and a giant video screen in Red Square and announced road closures for Friday. State media described it as preparations for a rally and concert “in support of the outcome of the referendums.”

The annexation move has been greeted with international condemnation, and Ukraine has essentially ignored the Kremlin’s plans. Russian officials have spoken of defending their claims to the annexed territory by any means, a hint at the potential use of nuclear weapons.

Senior U.S. officials say they do not believe Mr. Putin is poised to use nuclear weapons now, given the response it would draw from the West as well as from Moscow’s allies like China and India.

For his part, Mr. Putin did not mention his annexation plans in a brief television appearance on Thursday, but he did seek to portray himself as being on the right side of history, asserting “the formation of a more just world order is taking place.”

“Unipolar hegemony is inexorably collapsing,” Mr. Putin said. “This is an objective reality that the West categorically refuses to accept.”

In Ukraine Kyiv’s forces pressed on with a counteroffensive that has enabled them to retake territory in the northeast of the country this month and make inroads into Donetsk and Luhansk, two of the regions where referendums were held.

In a speech late on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine reiterated his denunciation of the votes and said he was working with foreign leaders to coordinate a strong international response.

“Our key task now is to coordinate actions with partners in response to sham referendums organized by Russia and all related threats,” Mr. Zelensky said.

The billboards proclaimed: “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson — Russia!” naming the regions in southern and eastern Ukraine where Russian proxy officials staged votes in the last week.

All four regions are partially occupied by Russian troops and the referendums, put on hastily in the face of the military setbacks for the Kremlin, purported to return big majorities in favor of joining Russia.

Governments around the world say the votes lacked democratic legitimacy, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the coercion of voters, the absence of independent observers and the flight of many civilians from the areas because of fighting. In addition, the government in Kyiv told its citizens not to participate.

The sequence of choreographed steps for a region to join the Russian Federation is laid out in the country’s constitution and is expected to be followed in the coming days. That follows the pattern of a similar vote in Crimea, a region of southern Ukraine that was annexed by Russia in 2014.

Following the announcements of the purported results, Russian proxy officials in the four occupied areas appealed on Wednesday to join Russia.

In part of a carefully orchestrated process, the Russian proxy leaders in the territories were also expected to sign agreements with Moscow on Friday. The constitutional court, which is seen as a rubber stamp for the Kremlin, would then approve the agreements, and they would be ratified by both chambers of Russia’s Parliament.

At the same time, the Kremlin would introduce a draft law on the admission of the territories into Russia, which would be approved by the lower house of Parliament, the State Duma. Once Russia’s Federation Council passes the bill, it would be signed into law by Mr. Putin.

The Duma’s speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, announced on Wednesday that the Duma should hold its accession sessions to approve the annexation next Monday and Tuesday.

— Matthew Mpoke Bigg

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In Ukraine’s South, Fierce Fighting and Deadly Costs

AT THE KHERSON FRONT, Ukraine — The commander banged on the door furiously.

“I need help!” he shouted.

When Tetiana Kozyr opened up, the commander rushed in, carrying a young soldier on his shoulders. She said the young man was sunburned, thin and gravely wounded.

The Ukrainians were trying to recapture her village, the smallest dot on the most detailed military maps. Russian forces had just blown up three Ukrainian tanks. Flames leaped off the roofs of neighboring houses.

refused to let his commanders retreat from the city of Kherson, according to American officials.

recently said that Ukraine was losing 50 soldiers a day.

officially announced the beginning of the offensive. She fled a few days later and now lives in a displaced persons shelter in the city of Zaporizhzhia.

She said that when the commander first arrived with the wounded soldier, she panicked.

“I was yelling at him: ‘Why did you bring him here? The Russians will kill us all!’” she said.

But the commander just stepped through the doorway, desperate to find shelter. The village was on fire, in the middle of two armies blasting each other.

She shrunk back as her husband and the commander pressed bandages to the young man’s wounds. Shrapnel had sliced through his back and lungs. Her kitchen floor was soon covered in blood.

The Kremlin has struggled to replenish its troops in Ukraine. There even have been reports of widespread recruitment in prisons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization of reservists Wednesday, taking a risky and deeply unpopular step that follows humiliating setbacks for his troops nearly seven months after invading Ukraine.

The first such call-up in Russia since World War II is sure to further fuel tensions with the Western backers of Ukraine, who derided it as an act of weakness and desperation. The move also sent some Russians scrambling to buy plane tickets out of the country and reportedly sparked some demonstrations.

The Kremlin has struggled to replenish its troops in Ukraine, reaching out for volunteers. There even have been reports of widespread recruitment in prisons.

In his seven-minute nationally televised address, Putin also warned the West that he isn’t bluffing over using everything at his disposal to protect Russia — an apparent reference to his nuclear arsenal. He has previously told the West not to back Russia against the wall and has rebuked NATO countries for supplying weapons to Ukraine.

The total number of reservists to be called up could be as high as 300,000, officials said. However, Putin’s decree authorizing the partial mobilization that took effect immediately offered few details, raising suspicions that the draft could be broadened at any moment. Notably, one clause was kept secret.

Even a partial mobilization is likely to increase dismay or doubt among Russians about the war. Shortly after Putin’s address, Russian media reported a spike in demand for plane tickets abroad amid an apparent scramble to leave despite exorbitant prices.

The Vesna opposition movement called for nationwide protests, although it was unclear how many would act, given Russia’s harsh laws against criticizing the military and the war.

“Thousands of Russian men — our fathers, brothers and husbands — will be thrown into the meat grinder of the war. What will they be dying for? What will mothers and children be crying for?” the group said.

As protest calls circulated online, the Moscow prosecutor’s office warned that organizing or participating in such actions could lead to up to 15 years in prison. Authorities issued similar warnings ahead of other protests recently. The state communication watchdog Roskomnadzor also warned media that access to their websites would be blocked for transmitting “false information” about the mobilization. It was unclear exactly what that meant.

Within hours, police arrested scores of people at antiwar protests across Russia, including at least a dozen in Moscow. An Associated Press crew in Moscow witnessed at least dozen of arrests in the first 15 minutes of a protest.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked what had changed since he and others previously said no mobilization was planned, said Russia is effectively fighting NATO because the alliance’s members have supplied weapons to Kyiv.

The partial mobilization order came a day after Russian-controlled regions in eastern and southern Ukraine announced plans for referendums on becoming integral parts of Russia — a move that could eventually allow Moscow to escalate the war. The referendums will start Friday in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.

The balloting is all but certain to go Moscow’s way. Foreign leaders are already calling the votes illegitimate and nonbinding. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said they were a “sham” and “noise” to distract the public.

U.S. national security council spokesperson John Kirby said Putin’s speech is “definitely a sign that he’s struggling, and we know that.”

Added White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on MSNBC: “It’s all because Russia is losing ground on the battlefield.”

Kirby told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Russia has suffered tens of thousands of casualties, has command and control issues, terrible troop morale, desertion problems and is “forcing the wounded back (into) the fight.”

But Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who also spoke on Russian TV, said 5,937 Russian soldiers have died in the conflict, far lower than Western estimates.

Shoigu also said that only those with relevant combat and service experience will be mobilized, adding that about 25 million people fit this criteria but only about 1% of them will be mobilized.

Neither Shoigu nor Putin offered any other criteria for the call-up, so it wasn’t clear how many years of combat experience or what level of training those to be mobilized must have. The decree, signed by Putin and released on the Kremlin website, provided even less clarity, stipulating only that “citizens of the Russian Federation” will be drafted in the partial mobilization.

Another key clause in the decree prevents most professional soldiers from terminating their contracts and leaving service until the partial mobilization is no longer in place.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been the target of broad international criticism at the U.N. General Assembly that has kept up intense diplomatic pressure on Moscow. Zelenskyy is due to speak to the gathering in a prerecorded address later Wednesday. Putin is not attending.

U.S. President Joe Biden used the global forum to say Russia has “shamelessly violated the core tenets” of the U.N with its “brutal, needless war” in Ukraine. He said Putin’s new nuclear threats against Europe showed “reckless disregard” for Russia’s responsibilities as a signer of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Putin’s mobilization gambit has a strong element of risk: It could backfire by making the war unpopular at home and hurting his own standing. It also concedes Russia’s underlying military shortcomings.

A Ukraine counteroffensive this month has seized the military initiative from Russia, as well as capturing large areas in Ukraine that the Russians once held. Its speed saw Russian troops abandon armored vehicles and other weapons as they retreated.

A spokesman for Zelenskyy called the mobilization a “big tragedy” for the Russian people.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Ukrainian presidential spokesman Sergii Nikiforov said conscripts sent to Ukraine would face the same fate as ill-prepared Russian forces who unsuccessfully tried to take Kyiv early in the war.

“This is a recognition of the incapacity of the Russian professional army, which has failed in all its tasks,” Nikiforov said.

The Russian mobilization is unlikely to produce any consequences on the battlefield for months because of a lack of training facilities and equipment.

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace described Putin’s move as “an admission that his invasion is failing.”

Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin said it seemed “an act of desperation.” He predicted that Russians will resist the mobilization through “passive sabotage.”

“People will evade this mobilization in every possible way, bribe their way out of this mobilization, leave the country,” Oreshkin told the AP.

The announcement will be unpopular, he said, describing it as “a huge personal blow to Russian citizens, who until recently (took part in the hostilities) with pleasure, sitting on their couches, (watching) TV. And now the war has come into their home.”

The war in Ukraine, which has killed thousands of people, has driven up food prices worldwide and caused energy costs to soar. It has also brought fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe at Europe’s largest nuclear plant in Ukraine’s now Russia-occupied southeast. Investigations are also underway into possible war crimes atrocities committed by Moscow’s forces.

In his address, which was far shorter than previous speeches on the war, Putin accused the West of engaging in “nuclear blackmail” and noted “statements of some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO states about the possibility of using nuclear weapons of mass destruction against Russia.”

He didn’t elaborate.

“To those who allow themselves such statements regarding Russia, I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction … and when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal,” Putin said, adding: “It’s not a bluff.”

In a speech hours later in Novgorod marking 1,160 years of Russian statehood, Putin hailed the “heroes” fighting in Ukraine and stressed the “colossal responsibility” of protecting the nation’s sovereignty.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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