WAR IN UKRAINE Russia moves to bolster its forces
Putin takes steps to fast track Russian citizenship to residents in occupied southern Ukraine
KYIV, UKRAINE President Vladimir Putin issued an order Wednesday to fast track Russian citizenship for residents in parts of southern Ukraine largely held by his forces, while lawmakers in Moscow passed a bill to strengthen the stretched Russian army.
Putin’s decree applying to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions could allow Russia to strengthen its hold on territory that lies between eastern Ukraine, where Moscowbacked separatists occupy some areas, and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014.
The Russian army is engaged in an intense battle for Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, known as the Donbas. In a sign that the Kremlin is trying to bolster its stretched military machine, Russian lawmakers agreed to scrap the age limit of 40 for individuals signing their first voluntary military contracts.
A description of the bill on the parliament website indicated older recruits would be allowed to operate precision weapons or serve in engineering or medical roles. The chair of the Russian parliament’s defence committee, Andrei Kartapolov, said the measure would make it easier to hire people with “in-demand” skills.
Russian authorities have said that only volunteer contract soldiers are sent to fight in Ukraine, although they have acknowledged that some conscripts were drawn into the fighting by mistake in the early stages of the war.
Three months into Russia’s invasion of the neighbouring country, Putin visited a military hospital in Moscow on Wednesday and met with some soldiers wounded in Ukraine, the Kremlin said. The event was the Russian leader’s first publicly known visit with soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has visited wounded soldiers, civilians and children — including at times when Russian troops were fighting on the outskirts of Kyiv.
A reporter for the state-run Russia1 TV channel posted a video clip on Telegram showing Putin in a white medical coat talking to a man in hospital attire, presumably a soldier. The man tells Putin that he has a son. The president, accompanied by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, responds: “He will be proud of his father,” before shaking the man’s hand.
Zelenskyy reiterated Wednesday that he would be willing to negotiate with Putin directly but said Moscow needs to retreat to the positions it held before the invasion and must show it’s ready to “shift from the bloody war to diplomacy.”
“I believe it would be a correct step for Russia to make,” Zelenskyy told leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by video link.
He also said that Ukraine wants to drive Russian troops out of all captured areas. “Ukraine will fight until it reclaims all its territories,” Zelenskyy said. “It’s about our independence and our sovereignty.”
Russia already had a program to expedite the naturalization of people living in Luhansk and Donetsk, the two eastern Ukraine provinces that make up the Donbas region and where the Moscow-backed separatists hold large areas as selfdeclared independent republics.
During a visit to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions last week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin indicated they could become part of “our Russian family.”
A Russia-installed official in the Kherson region has predicted the region would become part of Russia.
Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia’s secondlargest city, plans to start issuing Russian passports in the near future, said the Russian-installed acting mayor, Galina Danilchenko.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Ukraine was not ready to cede control of areas occupied by Russian forces for the sake of reaching a peace agreement, saying some western lobbyists are pushing Kyiv to so.
“Ukrainian society has paid a terrible price and will not allow anyone to take even a step in this direction — not a single government, not a single country,” Podolyak said on Telegram. He said instead ceding territory would only freeze the conflict, not resolve it.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for friendly countries to provide the Ukrainian military with multiple launch rocket systems so they could try to recapture territory taken by the Russians. “Every day of someone sitting in Washington, Berlin, Paris and other capitals, and considering whether they should or should not do something, costs us lives and territories,” Kuleba said.
Also Wednesday, the Russian Defence Ministry promised to open a safe corridor to allow foreign ships to leave Black Sea ports. A separate corridor will be open to allow ships to leave Mariupol by sailing from the port on the Sea of Azov port to the Black Sea.
The blockade has endangered the world food supply by preventing Ukraine from shipping its agricultural products, such as wheat, corn and sunflower oil.