Putin last week declared an unpopular partial mobilization, prompting thousands of fighting-age men to flee the country.
Ukraine, U.S. and U.N. say exercise has no legal valueAt a ceremony denounced by Ukraine as a “Kremlin freak show”, Russian President Vladimir Putin will proclaim the annexation of four Ukrainian regions on Friday, escalating his seven-month war and taking it into an unpredictable new phase.
Ukraine and Western governments described those votes as bogus, illegitimate and conducted at gunpoint. “The Kremlin’s sham referenda are a futile effort to mask what amounts to a further attempt at a land grab in Ukraine,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday.The ceremony – eight years after Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine following an invasion and a similar vote – will take place at 3 p.m.
After months of grinding, attritional warfare, Ukraine seized the initiative this month by routing Russian forces in the northeastern Kharkiv region. Putin last week declared an unpopular partial mobilisation, prompting thousands of fighting-age men to flee the country.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Thursday that the Kremlin event was a “freak show”, and legally meaningless. “Non-existent entities cannot enter a country which is disintegrating,” he said on Twitter.