Putin to annex 4 Ukrainian territories in Kremlin ceremony on Friday
- Agreements will be signed with four territories that held referendums as Russia begins annexing 15 per cent of Ukraine
- A ceremony will take place in the Grand Kremlin Palace where the Russian leader is expected to make a major speech
Russian President Vladimir Putin will on Friday begin formally annexing 15 per cent of Ukrainian territory, presiding at a ceremony in the Kremlin to declare four Ukrainian regions part of Russia.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the ceremony would take place at 3pm local time on Friday in the St George’s (Georgievsky) Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace to sign “agreements on the accession of new territories into the Russian Federation”.
Agreements will be signed “with all four territories that held referendums and made corresponding requests to the Russian side”, Peskov said.
Ukraine and the West have rejected the hastily arranged votes, held in the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions seven months after Russia’s invasion, as illegitimate shams conducted at gunpoint.
Putin’s decision to incorporate the regions into Russia means Moscow will annex an area of eastern and southern Ukraine roughly the size of Portugal to go along with the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized from Ukraine and declared part of Russia in 2014.