Putin declares ‘four new regions of Russia’ as Moscow illegally annexes parts of Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday declared four new regions of the country shortly after holding sham referendums in parts of occupied Ukraine.

“There are four new regions of Russia,” Putin said in a televised ceremony from the Kremlin in Moscow, according to a translation.

“The results are known, well known,” Putin said, referring to the series of votes that Ukraine and Western governments say breached international law. He claimed the results were due to the will of millions of people, saying they had the right to self-determination.

The territory being seized more than seven months into the Kremlin’s war consists of two pro-Russian “republics” in Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, and in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. It is thought to make up roughly 18% of Ukraine’s land, although the precise details of the boundaries were not immediately clear.

Unsurprisingly, the votes, seen as illegitimate by Ukraine and its allies, saw a majority of people vote to join Russia.

Echoing previous claims that the West is trying to undermine Russia, Putin said, “The West is looking for new opportunities to hit us and they always dreamt about breaking our state into smaller states who will be fighting against each other.”

“They cannot be happy with this idea that there is this large country with all [these] natural riches and people who will never live under a foreign oppression,” he added.

His comments come shortly after a civilian convoy in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia was hit by a Russian strike, killing at least 23 people.

Those in the convoy were heading into Russian-occupied territory to pick up their relatives, the city’s governor said. Moscow has issued a statement saying the attack was carried out by Ukraine.

Ukraine said the referendums were carried out “under the barrel of a gun” and called on its international allies to immediately ramp up severe sanctions on Russia in order to deter it from annexing more territory as it did with Crimea in 2014.

Kyiv said it will not stop fighting until it has reclaimed every last inch of land lost to Russia and said it will not negotiate with the Kremlin following the so-called votes.

Moscow, for its part, has warned it has “the right” to use nuclear weapons to defend its territory and citizens if it feels there is an existential threat, or even if it’s attacked by conventional weapons.

This has raised concerns that it could resort to using nuclear weapons against Ukraine now that more regions are annexed and Moscow can claim them, however falsely, as their own. One Ukrainian defense ministry official told CNBC this week that Kyiv understands the threat of such an attack is “real.”

Western nations have vowed to keep supporting Ukraine, repeating the mantra that they will do so “whatever it takes,” but there are fears that should the war continue for months, and years, ahead that support could wane; there are already concerns that the U.S. and Europe are running out of weapons to send Ukraine, which is largely reliant on NATO arms to keep fighting the war.