Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: After over 20,000 able-bodied men fled Russia over the last few days to skip their compulsory conscription in the Ukraine war, officially known as the ‘partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists’, President Vladimir Putin will begin on Friday a controversial process of formally annexing nearly 15 percent territory it has wrested in the last seven months from war-ravaged Ukraine.
The media reported on Thursday that he will preside over a signing ceremony at the Kremlin on Friday to add four Ukrainian regions to Russia, after sham referendums held recently in what Moscow claims are the Russian-majority areas in eastern Ukraine, viz. Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhya. In February, Moscow “recognized” Luhansk and Donetsk as “independent” territories.
These contiguous areas will give mainland Russia direct access to Crimea and the Black Sea, where it had already annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 to set up a naval base.
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the ceremony would take place at 1500 Moscow time (1200 GMT) on Friday “on agreements on the accession of new territories into the Russian Federation.”
Agreements will be signed “with all four territories that held referendums and made corresponding requests to the Russian side,” Peskov said.
Ukraine and the West have rejected the hastily arranged votes, held seven months after Russia’s invasion, as illegitimate shams.
Putin’s decision to incorporate the regions into Russia means Moscow will annex vast areas across eastern and southern Ukraine, representing around 15% of Ukraine’s total territory.
After the signing ceremonies in the Kremlin, Putin will deliver a major speech and meet with Moscow-appointed administrators of the Ukrainian regions, the Kremlin said.
After annexing these areas, Putin might exhibit them as a war trophy at home before he potentially closes the war, or the “special military operation”, he had begun on February 24 this year.