Russia will annex four regions of Ukraine that its troops occupy at a grand ceremony in the Kremlin on Friday, Moscow said, after President Vladimir Putin threatened he could use nuclear weapons to defend the territories, IgbereTV reports
The threats have not deterred a sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive, which has been pushing back Russian troops in the east and is on the doorstep of the Donetsk region town of Lyman that Moscow’s forces pummelled for weeks before capturing this summer.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the annexation of these four areas would be formalised at a ceremony in the Kremlin and that Putin would deliver a “major” speech.
The Russian leader himself then blamed the conflict in Ukraine on the West and said simmering conflicts in the ex-USSR were the result of the Soviet collapse.
The rhetoric built on his now famous phrase that the collapse of the USSR was a tragedy and he has recently suggested Moscow should extend again its influence over the former Soviet region.
“It’s enough to look at what’s happening now between Russia and Ukraine and what is happening on the borders of some other CIS countries,” Putin told security chiefs from former Soviet countries.
