On 30 September, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, signed “accession treaties” which formally subsumed four Ukrainian regions — Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk — into Russia.
Putin signed off the annexations following hastily arranged, blatantly rigged votes in these Russian-occupied areas. After three of the five days allocated for voting the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics had declared a fantastical 87% turnout, in a war zone, including 50% in the destroyed, largely abandoned and uninhabited towns of Lysychansk, Sieverodonetsk and Rubishne.
Russia claims these four areas voted 93, 87, 99 and 98%, respectively, to join Russia. These ridiculous “results,” so obviously rigged, were not meant to persuade anyone outside Russia that the votes were legitimate. Instead the figures were declared for Russia’s domestic audience where they were intended to project Putin’s power and reinforce the regime’s story that Ukraine is a non-country where there is almost unanimous support to join Russia.
Rattled by recent Ukrainian battlefield gains, and an unpopular conscription drive, Russia’s policy is so shambolic it was unclear exactly what territory Putin was laying claim to. Ukraine still holds large parts of Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts and is retaking ground in Luhansk and Kherson. Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said he would have to “clarify” the question of borders. Donetsk’s Russian stooge, Denis Pushilin said, “What are the borders? Let’s wait for the final decisions, consultations are being held on how to do it right.”
In a rambling speech to mark his attempted theft of Ukrainian land, Vladimir Putin ranted against the west: “[The Western powers] don’t want us to be free, they want us to be a colony.” Putin also hinted, yet again, that he could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Putin’s remarks about nuclear war need to be seen in context. His basic policy is to pressurise and alarm the West enough to stop the US and EU states arming Ukraine, and to force Ukraine to sign a lousy peace deal favourable to Russia. Just as France and Germany did in 2014 when they pushed Ukraine to sign the Minsk agreements.
If Putin is able to freeze the war along its current lines he will be able to regroup and possibly invade again in the future.
So the threat of nuclear war is useful to Putin, politically. Which does not mean Putin is simply bluffing and nuclear war cannot happen. It might.
The world is probably closer to nuclear war than at any time since the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe. Putin could calculate battlefield nuclear weapons might frighten Ukraine enough to force it to capitulate. He could destroy a town. Or, alternatively, he might decide to use nuclear (or chemical weapons) to prevent a Russian defeat in Ukraine (he looks likely to lose Lyman in the next few days and Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the north east is still gaining ground), which would endanger his position at home.
America has told Putin that any Russian use of nuclear weapons will be met with a very serious (probably conventional) counter-attack. That would widen the war immediately, and such a development would be very difficult to contain and to predict an outcome.
In response to Putin Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would continue to fight to recover all Russian-occupied land. The four annexed Oblasts form about 15% of Ukrainian territory.
The US and EU denounced the annexations as “illegitimate”. NATO General Secretary, Jens Stoltenburg, called the move a “serious escalation”. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said annexation had “no legal value.”
A UN Security Council motion which described the referenda as “illegal” and asked governments to refuse to recognise the land-grabs was vetoed by Russia. The voting on the motion was 10-1 in favour with China, India, Gabon and Brazil abstaining.
Recently Putin admitted that China’s President Xi had expressed “concerns” about the invasion. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also criticised the Russian war.
Despite their abstentions at the UN, China and India have both stated that they will not recognise the annexations. Close Russian allies Kazakhstan (which is worried about Russia taking part of its northern, ethnically-Russian territory) and Serbia (which has its own worries about borders) will also not recognise the annexations.
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