As the West prepares to declare penalties on Russia amid fears of a full-scale invasion, Russia prepared the scene for a rapid move to secure its hold on Ukraine’s separatist territories on Tuesday with new laws that would allow the deployment of troops there.
The new Russia bills were introduced a day after President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of eastern Ukraine’s provinces. They are expected to be rapidly approved by the Kremlin-controlled parliament. The bill might be used as a pretext for a deeper incursion into Ukrainian territory, as the US and its allies fear.
Convoys of armored vehicles were observed heading over separatist-controlled territory shortly after Putin signed the decree late Monday. It was unclear whether they were Russian at the time.
Russian officials have yet to announce any force deployments to the rebel east, but Vladislav Brig, a member of the separatist Donetsk local council, told reporters that Russian troops had already gone in, taking up positions in the region’s north and west.
Putin’s recognition of the rebel territories as independent republics comes after a nearly eight-year separatist struggle that has killed over 14,000 people and ruined Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, known as Donbas. Many countries around the world have expressed their displeasure with Putin’s recent actions and statements.
Ukraine and its Western allies have accused Russia of supporting rebels with troops and weaponry since the conflict erupted weeks after Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Moscow has denied the claims, claiming that Russians who fought in the east were volunteers. Putin’s move on Monday formalizes Russia’s control over the territories and allows it to deploy its military freely.
Military ties are envisioned in draft measures that are expected to pass rapidly through both houses of the Russian parliament on Tuesday, including the probable deployment of Russian military outposts in the separatist territory.
Several prominent MPs recommended on Tuesday that Russia recognize the rebel-held territories in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions in their original administrative borders, including those currently under Ukrainian control.
“We are not frightened of anyone or anything,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a speech delivered tonight to the country. There isn’t anything we owe anyone. And we’re not going to give anything out to anyone.” The State Department said that his foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, would be in Washington on Tuesday to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“The Kremlin acknowledged its own aggression against Ukraine,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov wrote on Twitter, calling Moscow’s move a “New Berlin Wall” and asking the West to strike Russia with sanctions as soon as possible.
The White House acted immediately, releasing an executive order prohibiting US investment and commerce in the separatist regions, and more measures, most likely sanctions, were expected to be revealed on Tuesday. According to a senior administration source who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, those sanctions are separate from what Washington has planned in the event of a Russian invasion.
Other Western allies have also stated that penalties will be announced.
Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, announced on Tuesday that the United Kingdom will impose “immediate” economic penalties against Russia, and warned that the consequences might be severe.
“A full-scale invasion of Ukraine… it would be utterly terrible,” Putin says.
Johnson claimed that Putin had “totally blown up international law,” and that British penalties will target “Russian economic interests as hard as we can,” not simply the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
“Russian troops have entered in Donbas,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said, adding, “I wouldn’t say it’s a full-fledged invasion, but Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil,” and the EU would vote on penalties later Tuesday.
In a radio interview on Tuesday, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Baszczak claimed he could confirm that Russian forces had infiltrated the areas, calling it a violation of Ukraine’s boundaries and international law.
Despite the tight connections between Moscow and Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin stated on Tuesday that China would “continue to stay in interaction with all parties,” refusing to commit to backing Russia.
While Ukraine and the West have claimed that Russia’s recognition of rebel regions undermines a 2015 peace agreement, Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, has disputed this, pointing out that Moscow isn’t a party to the Minsk agreement and arguing that it could still be implemented if Ukraine so chooses.
Following a succession of Ukrainian military defeats, the 2015 pact mediated by France and Germany and signed in Minsk, Belarus’ capital, obliged Ukraine to provide extensive self-rule to the rebel territories as a diplomatic coup for Russia. The accord was viewed as a betrayal of national interests and a blow to the country’s integrity by many in Ukraine, and its implementation has been delayed.
Putin made the announcement in a one-hour televised speech, blaming the current crisis on the US and its allies and characterizing Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as an existential threat to Russia.
“Russia’s security is directly threatened by Ukraine’s membership in NATO,” he stated.
Russia says it wants assurances from the West that NATO will not admit Ukraine and other former Soviet republics as members — and Putin warned on Monday that a simple delay on Ukraine’s entrance would be insufficient. Moscow has also requested that the alliance stop sending weapons to Ukraine and withdraw its military from Eastern Europe, demands that the West has firmly rejected.
Putin cautioned on Monday that if the West rejects Moscow’s demands, Russia has the right to take more security measures.
Putin presented today’s Ukraine as a recent creation designed by the West to restrain Russia, despite the neighbors’ inextricable linkages, as he swept through more than a century of history.
In a stern warning to Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the country had unfairly inherited Russia’s historic land, which had been granted to it by the Soviet Union’s Communist rulers, and mocked the country’s efforts to shed its Communist past in a so-called “decommunization” campaign.
“We are ready to show you what true decommunization means for Ukraine,” Putin added ominously, implying that he is prepared to file additional territorial claims.
The US has warned that Moscow has already chosen to invade, with an estimated 150,000 Russian troops stationed on three flanks of Ukraine.
Nonetheless, in a last-ditch effort to avoid war, President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin tentatively agreed to meet, mediated by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Biden and Putin had “approved the premise of such a summit,” according to Macron’s office, which would be followed by a larger conference with other “important parties to address security and strategic stability in Europe.”
The meeting will be canceled if Russia intervenes, but the thought of a face-to-face encounter has reignited diplomatic hopes of averting a conflict that might devastate Ukraine and cause massive economic damage across Europe, which is largely reliant on Russian energy.
Tensions have remained high in eastern Ukraine, with further shelling reported along the insurgents’ and Ukrainian forces’ tense line of contact. Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another 12 were wounded by shelling in the last 24 hours, according to the Ukrainian military. It has denied insurgent reports of shelling residential areas and stated that Ukrainian forces are not firing back.
