Russia includes four regions of Ukraine. The goal is to intimidate NATO to stop sending weapons to the Ukrainian army, says one of the leading Russian researchers in Norway. She herself is afraid of evolution.
The development follows an expected pattern: the Kremlin on Thursday acknowledged the results of Russia’s “referendums” in four regions of Ukraine.
And on Friday, President Vladimir Putin will announce that Regions are annexed and incorporated into Russia itself.
Thus, the Russian military doctrine will turn the war upside down: then it will be Ukraine that will attack Russia, With weapons from NATO countriesRussia will claim.
By annexing these four regions, the regime is trying to tell its citizens that it is now Russia that is under attack, says NUPI’s Russian researcher Julie Wilhelmsen, to VG.
— But a signal of deterrence also goes west to NATO to end support for Ukraine, she explains.
occupied areas
The four regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya will be merged into Ukraine. In Luhansk, Russia occupied the entire province, while the other three regions were partially occupied.
– A ceremony will be held for the signing of agreements for the entry of new territories into the Russian Federation. There will be a big speech by President Putin at the event, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RIA news agency.
According to the Russian state news agency TASS, the ceremony will take place on Friday at 14:00 local time.
Already this weekend The books of the independent Russian media controlled by the Kremlin Next Friday, Russia will declare the four regions its own.
my knowledge: This is how Russia justifies the escalation of the war
Putting pressure on Putin
Wilhelmsen believed that the planned annexation was the outcome of the war, so bad for Russia.
The regime feels the war effort is collapsing, against the backdrop of the Ukrainian army pushing Russian soldiers from stronghold to stronghold. The 300,000 troop mobilization announced last week looks like complete chaos.
Putin and the elite are all under enormous pressure. There are desperate acts and rhetoric. They want to intimidate NATO from supplying them with long-range weapons that could hit these regions.
– Putin is trapped in the corner and now has to live on his plots. What the propaganda says to the Russians is that NATO is attacking and encircling Russia through Ukraine, threatening to eliminate Russia. Then you have to defend yourself by all means.
– Unlock the use of nuclear weapons. Do you think this is possible?
– I hope they’re not so crazy that they do, but yes, it’s a scary scenario.
– Do you fear yourself?
– I have been afraid since the war in Ukraine in 2014.
An emergency solution for Russia
– I see this as an emergency solution for Putin, Mitt Skak, a Russian expert at Aarhus University, tells VG.
– These referendums and annexation are evidence that Russia is trying to salvage what can be salvaged, Skak continues.
Professor Emeritus Christian Gerner at Lund University also uses the word “emergency solution” when spoken to by VG:
– The goal in the early days of the war was to overthrow President Volodymyr Zelensky. This is a kind of backtracking, even if Putin doesn’t say so. I think this is an emergency solution that Putin is using for his self-esteem and legitimacy now that the war is not going well.
– What does it mean for the war that these four regions of Ukraine, in the eyes of the Russians, become Russian now?
– If Ukraine attacks targets in these areas, it will be an attack on Russia. The speculation is that Putin will increase the mobilization. But I think what fundamentally changes is that Russia “forever”, at least in our time, does not want peace in Europe. They will not contribute to a stable and peaceful world order. The most important thing is that Putin’s arrogance and Russia’s greatness are still alive.
– What do you think of such a policy?
– It seems that Putin is pursuing a policy of self-destruction. Christian Gerner says Russia is increasingly isolating itself, and in the long run Russia will fall behind in development.
UD condemns
Foreign Minister Annikin Heitfeldt (AP) reiterates his condemnation of the so-called referendums in the occupied parts of Ukraine, which he says are untrue.
– These are areas under Russian military occupation, and it was the military occupation authorities that determined the outcome. Even the Russian media was unable to hide that the results had been falsified, Huitfeldt tells NTB.
The elections, where the question was whether the regions should be incorporated into Russia, were not considered by international observers to be either free or fair, and Norway and a number of other Western countries condemned the vote and made it clear that they would. You don’t know the result.
– Russia’s illegal implementation of “referendums” in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia has no validity and cannot constitute a basis for changing the status of these regions in Ukraine. Nor can it be used to legitimize attempts to incorporate these regions into Russia, she says.
Russia carried out a similar maneuver with Crimea in 2014. After the overthrow of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych during the Euromaidan Revolution, Russia seized the peninsula.
Then a referendum was organized in which there was a clear majority in favor of the integration of Crimea into Russia. However, the outcome was considered inevitable, and most of the world still recognized Crimea as part of Ukraine.
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