The Kremlin announces the annexation of 4 Ukrainian regions during Friday's ceremony
The Kremlin announced that the Russian Federation will formally annex four Ukrainian regions controlled by its forces during a major ceremony to be held in Moscow on Friday, after it indicated that nuclear weapons could be used to defend these regions.
But the threats issued by senior Russian officials did not succeed in preventing the advance of the Ukrainian forces, who are waging a large-scale counter campaign, during which they were able to force the Russian soldiers to retreat in the east, while getting closer and closer to the city of Lyman of the Donetsk region, which Moscow forces fought for weeks for Completely control it.
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov, said that the annexation process will become official during a ceremony in the Kremlin.
He added that the Russian president will deliver an "important" speech during the event.
"Tomorrow in St. George's Hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace at 15.00 (12:00 GMT), a signing ceremony will be held on the annexation of the new territories to Russia," Peskov told reporters.
The Kremlin-appointed leaders of the four regions met in the Russian capital on Thursday, a day after the pro-Moscow authorities directly appealed to Putin to annex the territory to Russia.
Their requests to the Kremlin, which were issued almost simultaneously, came after the four regions announced that their residents unanimously supported the move, in the framework of hastily organized referendums that Kyiv and the West considered illegal, fraudulent and invalid.
After the referendums, Ukraine considered that the only appropriate Western response would be to impose more sanctions on Russia and provide Ukrainian forces with more weapons to be able to continue their progress.
"Ukraine cannot tolerate any Russian attempts to grab any part of our land," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Wednesday.
The four regions, Kherson and Zaporizhia in the south, Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, constitute an important land corridor between Russia and Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
The five regions together represent about 20% of the Ukrainian territory, while government forces have been recapturing several sites for weeks.
The Ukrainian army is advancing, especially in the Kharkiv region in the east, and is regaining lands in Donetsk, while military observers indicate that it is close to recovering Lyman.
"The army is carrying out repeated attempts to besiege the city. Currently, our units are able to repel all attacks," a pro-Russian official in Donetsk region Alexei Konorov told state television Thursday.
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