Kremlin says Putin will sign ‘treaties’ to annex Ukrainian regions

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday will formally move to seize four Ukrainian territories by signing documents that the Kremlin is calling “accession treaties.”

The signing ceremony, to take place in the Grand Kremlin Palace on Friday, marks Putin’s attempt to annex the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, even though Russia does not fully control any of them either militarily or politically.

The move, in defiance of stern international warnings including from President Biden, potentially slams the door on diplomacy for years to come, and almost certainly assures further escalation of the war in Ukraine, with Kyiv insisting it will fight to reclaim all of its lands and Western allies promising to send more weapons and economic assistance.

Putin’s recent declaration of a partial military mobilization, intended to activate hundreds of thousands of reinforcements for deployment to Ukraine, and the sabotage this week of two Nord Stream natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea have raised fears that the Russian leader is readying for a long hybrid conflict with NATO. Russian officials have also warned that it could use a nuclear weapon to defend the Ukrainian territories once they are absorbed into Russia.