Vladimir Putin decided on Monday, February 21, to recognize the independence of the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, and immediately signed "friendship and mutual aid" agreements with these territories.

"I consider it necessary to take this decision which was ripe for a long time: to immediately recognize the independence of the People's Republic of Donetsk and the People's Republic of Lugansk", said the Russian president in a televised address.

He asked the Russian Parliament "to approve this decision and then to ratify the friendship and mutual aid agreements with the two republics".

He signed in the wake of the agreements with the leaders of these two territories, sponsored for eight years by Russia in the war which opposes them to Kiev.

The contents have not been disclosed.

Russian recognition of the separatists short-circuits the peace process resulting from the Minsk agreements of 2015, signed by Russia and Ukraine, under Franco-German mediation, and which aimed precisely at a return to Ukrainian sovereignty of these areas.

This decision paves the way for a call for assistance to Russia from these territories as sovereign states and therefore the entry of Russian forces into these regions.

The scenario has a precedent: in 2008, the Kremlin recognized the independence of two pro-Russian separatist "republics" in Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, after a lightning war against Tbilisi, a former Soviet republic which, like Ukraine, aspires to join NATO.

Between 169,000 and 190,000 soldiers at the gates of Ukraine

In his 65-minute speech, Vladimir Putin reviewed the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations for centuries and laid out a thesis that Ukraine is a nation created from scratch in Soviet times with territories essentially taken from Russia.

"Contemporary Ukraine was entirely and utterly created by Bolshevik and communist Russia," he said, having previously written a lengthy article outlining this idea and his theory that Ukraine and Russia are not in fact one country and one people.

During the speech, he appeared visibly upset and even threatening towards the Ukrainian authorities, accused of attacking the Russians and Russian speakers of the country, accusing them once again of orchestrating "a genocide which affects four million people ".

He also evoked a scenario according to which Ukraine could acquire nuclear weapons, because it has, according to him, the technical capacities because of its Soviet heritage.

Then, the master of the Kremlin once again denounced the successive enlargements of NATO, which Moscow considers a threat.

And according to him, the entry of Ukraine into the Atlantic Alliance would be "a matter of time", further aggravating the danger hanging over Russia, because the United States could deploy offensive weapons in Ukrainian territory.

He also repeated his demands with regard to the West: the end of NATO's enlargement policy, the absence of military deployment threatening Russia and the withdrawal of the Alliance's military infrastructure from Europe. from the east.

These were rejected.

"When the level of the threat increases so much, Russia has the right to adopt the necessary measures" to ensure its security, he hammered.

The recognition of the independence of the pro-Russian separatist regions of eastern Ukraine could serve as a pretext for Moscow to justify armed intervention.

Russia has tens of thousands of military personnel on Belarusian territory.

And the United States puts the number of troops deployed on Ukraine's borders at between 169,000 and 190,000.

With AFP and Reuters

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