In a speech on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that four regions of Ukraine – Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk – would be annexed and that millions of people still living there would become Russian citizens “forever.”
Following embarrassing losses in recent weeks, the Russian president appears to be doubling down on his insistence that these territories belong to Russia in the hope that Ukraine and its allies would back down.
During the annexation ceremony on Friday, the Russian president delivered a message to Kyiv and accused Ukraine of starting the war in 2014.
“I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me, so that they remember this. People living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens. Forever,” Putin said.
“We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately end hostilities, end the war that they unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table.”
The Russian president also made yet more threats against the West, hinting at nuclear conflict as an option to defend “Russian” territory, and accusing Western governments of promoting Satanism.
“The dictatorship of the Western elites is directed against all societies, including the peoples of the Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to all. This is a complete denial of humanity, the overthrow of faith and traditional values. Indeed, the suppression of freedom itself has taken on the features of a religion: outright Satanism,” Putin said.
Putin accused the west of beginning a colonial period in the Middle Ages, opined about the slave trade and the genocide of Indian tribes in America, and then accused Western leaders of “hooking entire nations on drugs.”
The speech laid out the Russian president’s intentions in Ukraine and proved that he won’t back down even in the face of defeat. It also appeared to be a rallying cry to his own people.
Not only does Putin want to win the war in Ukraine to gain new territory and expand his empire, but he clearly intends to rally support from his own people by declaring the conflict in Ukraine as a proxy war with the West and the ultra-progressive values promoted by some of the West’s leaders.
What the Maps Show
According to the latest maps from the Institute for the Study of War, Russia does not have full control over the four regions that President Putin annexed this week. As of September 29, Russian forces have virtually full control over Luhansk Oblast, with small pockets of contested regions and some Ukrainian-controlled territory in the east, neighboring Ukrainian-controlled parts of Donetsk Oblast.
In neighboring Donetsk, Russia controls roughly half of the territory to the south, formed as part of a land bridge between Luhansk and Russian-occupied Crimea. Northern Donetsk remains under the control of Ukraine, with a handful of areas in southwestern Donetsk seeing recent Russian advances to the north.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian troops have “likely nearly completed the encirclement of the Russian grouping” in Lyman, a city in the northernmost part of Donetsk, neighboring the city of Izyum in Kharkiv Oblast. A defeat for the Russians here would be a significant setback for Russia, and it’s on the cards.
Ukrainian legislator Oleksiy Goncharenko also gloated about Ukrainian gains in the region on Friday.
“Lyman! The operation to encircle the Russian group is at the stage of completion,” the legislator said.
In neighboring Zaporizhzhia, getting closer to Crimea, Russia also only controls roughly half of the territory. Russian forces made advances to the north in recent days, but Ukrainian forces have both the manpower and the weaponry required to hold off further Russian advances at least for the time being.
Kherson Oblast remains mostly under Russian control, though not entirely. The region’s most northern parts remain under Ukrainian control, following a recent successful counter-offensive, and the delivery of 18 more HIMARS missile systems from the United States could make it easier for Ukraine to regain more ground in the territory in the coming weeks.
Russia’s declaration of the annexation of these four regions may give the Kremlin the justification it needs to deploy more troops and maintain a military presence in Ukraine – a justification that perhaps only the Russian people will consider legitimate – but Russia does not fully control these regions and is set to lose control of more of these territories in the coming weeks.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
