Russia had “four new regions,” Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in a speech in the Kremlin yesterday, hours after an attack on a frontline civilian convoy killed at least 25 people near Zaporizhzhia City, in one of the four partly Russian-held region’s of Ukraine that Moscow sought to annex.
Putin has warned he could use nuclear weapons to retain control of those regions — Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Lugansk.
In Ukraine, authorities said they would launch an investigation into the attack.
Photo: AFP
“Twenty-five killed and about 50 wounded in an attack by the Russian military on a humanitarian convoy in Zaporizhzhia. Investigation launched,” the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office wrote on Telegram.
Bodies of people wearing civilian clothes were left on the ground after the attack and windows of vehicles blown out.
“Only complete terrorists could do this,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. “Bloodthirsty scum! You will definitely answer.”
Photo: REUTERS
“The enemy launched rockets on a civilian convoy leaving the city center” Zaporizhzhia Governor Oleksandr Starukh said.
However, Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-appointed official in the nearby town of Enerhodar, accused Ukrainian troops of carrying out a “terrorist act.”
“The regime in Kyiv is trying to portray what happened as shelling by Russian troops, resorting to a heinous provocation,” he said on social media.
Preparations were underway in Moscow’s Red Square throughout the day yesterday for state-organized celebrations to announce the annexation of the four regions.
Workers installed banners saying: “Donetsk. Lugansk. Zaporizhzhia. Kherson. Russia!”
“I’m happy if they want to join Russia,” Natalya Bodner, a 37-year-old lawyer told Agence France-Presse in central Moscow. “They have more hope than we do.”
“It should have been done a long time ago,” Ildar Babaev, a Russian service member from the southern region of Dagestan said. “This is the right decision.”
The four regions create a crucial land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
However, ahead of Putin’s announcement, the Kremlin had said it “needed to clarify” the exact borders of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — which are not fully controlled by Moscow’s forces.
Together, the four regions and Crimea make up about 20 percent of Ukraine, whose troops have over the past few weeks been clawing back wins as part of a counteroffensive.
Ukrainian forces are on the doorstep of Lyman in Donetsk, which Moscow’s forces pummeled for weeks to capture this summer.
“Lyman is partially surrounded,” Denis Pushilin, the pro-Moscow leader in the breakaway region, said on social media.
Two nearby villages were “not fully under our control,” he added.
In Sloviansk, a city in Donetsk, a Ukrainian military medic who goes by the name of Coconut said the annexations were nonsense.
“If my neighbor comes to my house and announces that it’s his, nobody believes it actually belongs to him,” he said.
In Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday condemned the elections Russia had held in the four regions ahead of the annexation.
“The government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) solemnly condemns Russia’s ambition to annex Ukraine’s territory through a fake referendum,” it said. “Russia has blatantly violated the UN Charter through its invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory, which undermines the rules-based international order.”
Taiwan reiterated its position of unanimity with like-minded countries as it refuses to recognize the results of Russia’s referendum in Ukraine, it said.
Taiwan would work with the EU, the US and other democracies to take appropriate countermeasures in response to the elections, it said.
Additional reporting by Yang Cheng-yu
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