New phase of the invasion: what Putin hopes to achieve with the annexation of four Ukrainian territories

Moscow annexes 15% of Ukraine after holding illegal referendums in the area The Russian president signs the annexation treaties for Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson this FridayPutin will consider the attacks on these Ukrainian regions as an aggression against Russia and threatens to the use of nuclear weapons”Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhia, Kherson: Russia!” reads the new billboards installed in Moscow’s Red Square. Those four Ukrainian territories are annexed by Moscow this Friday. Vladimir Putin’s pulse is not trembling. After holding referendums lacking legitimacy – and considered a farce by the West – the Russian president takes a new step. 15% of Ukraine’s territory is annexed, about 90,000 square kilometers (equivalent to the size of Portugal or Hungary). He does so after his setbacks on the battlefield, seven months after the start of the war and eight years after taking Crimea. It is the largest forced annexation since World War II. That movement, which can further intensify the war, is staged in a ceremony held in one of the most grandiose halls of the Kremlin in which the annexation treaties are signed. The pro-Russian leaders -imposed by Moscow- of those regions located to the east and south of Ukraine are attending. After declaring them as part of the Russian Federation, Putin -as he has warned- will consider any attack on those territories as a direct aggression against Russia. What does the president hope to achieve with this movement? Thus, Putin launches three messages, Mira Milosevic, principal researcher for Russia at the Elcano Royal Institute, explains to NIUS. Nuclear umbrella. The first is a message to the West. “Once incorporated into Russia, these territories will be treated as Russian, and therefore defended as such, which includes the use of nuclear weapons. According to Russian military doctrine, nuclear weapons can be used four times. Three of them, in a foreign nuclear attack. The fourth is when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country is in danger and there would be no other way to respond, “says Milosevic. Historical mission. This message, in addition to the West, is also intended for its own people. The four Ukrainian territories “were part of the Russian Empire, they are historical territories but also known as New Russia, which Catherine the Great incorporated. So here is a historical mission. In fact, last June, on the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great, Putin mentioned the battle of 1709 saying that the Russians only wanted to recover what is theirs. He drew a parallel. It is a message to their own population: we have recovered what is ours, we have a historic mission and we have done it.” victory. Like the previous one, the third message is directed outward and inward. This war has developed in a very different way than the Kremlin had imagined. For this reason, “Putin is desperately looking for a reason to proclaim a kind of victory. He cannot lose this war because his regime depends on it,” explains the expert from the Elcano Royal Institute. And he adds: “He has to present himself as a man who has won the war and by adding these territories he wants to remind the population of the golden moment of the incorporation of Crimea in 2014. He can say ‘we have won, it is our victory’. The problem here is that in 2014 Ukraine had not fired a single bullet to defend Crimea and now kyiv (both President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian military) declare that they want to recover these territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea, so the situation is very different”. Map of Ukraine with the territories annexed by Russia. EUROPA PRESS A new phase in the war Is the conflict entering an even tougher phase? “When the war can enter an even more dangerous moment, since Russia is a nuclear power, it is when Ukraine tries to recover these territories. Moscow is going to defend them and this must be taken very seriously,” says Mira Milosevich. “I don’t think Russia is going to use its nuclear weapons to win the war, but to defend itself,” she says. The Ukrainian president, for his part, has claimed that “pseudo-referendums” on annexation destroy any chance of talks. of peace. He has called for this Friday an emergency meeting of the Defense and National Security Council and has assured that “the territorial integrity of Ukraine will be restored”. In a statement, he stated that kyiv “will respond harshly”. The holding of these accession referendums in the Ukrainian territories took place in a war situation, with part of the population fleeing and under duress. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday that many people “had been taken from their homes and workplaces by threats and sometimes at gunpoint” to vote. “This is the opposite of free and fair elections,” she added. Residents who managed to escape from those areas to others controlled by kyiv have corroborated this. There was no independent oversight of that vote held for five days. Unsurprisingly, the result offered overwhelming support for joining Russia. In this context, Putin announced last week the mobilization of 300,000 Russian reservists to fight in Ukraine. The European Union responded Thursday with new sanctions on Russia. Both chambers of the Russian Parliament will formally ratify the annexation treaties next week.