Russia Plans to Annex Swathes of Ukraine
September 20th, 2022Ukraine’s Foreign Minister: “Every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say.”
Via: Reuters:
Russia on Tuesday gave support to plans by separatists which it backs in Ukraine to hold referendums paving the way for the annexation of swathes of additional territory, a direct challenge to the West that could sharply escalate the conflict.
After nearly seven months of war, including a critical battlefield defeat in northeastern Ukraine, Putin is pondering his next steps.
In what appeared to be choreographed requests, Russian-backed officials across 15% of Ukrainian territory – an area about the size of Hungary or Portugal – lined up to request referendums on joining Russia.
The self-styled Donetsk (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republics (LPR), which Putin recognised as independent just before the invasion, and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions have asked for votes over less than 24 hours.
The thing about the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions is that they all prefer to speak in Russian. Most people in those regions were always oriented toward Russia. In fact, most of the Ukrainian Orthodox churches in those regions belong to the Moscow patriarchate, not the Ukrainian patriarchate. The people in those regions will never want to fall under Ukrainian control again, as they know they will be subject to brutal reprisals from the Kiev regime for their pro-Russian sympathies.
Remember how throughout the Cold War era, one of the favorite mantras of the US foreign policy establishment was that “peoples have the Right to Self-Determination”? Well, it seems to me if the people of those regions self-determine that they want to be re-united with Russia, that should be their prerogative.