Annexation plan warning
Moscow is preparing to annex vast new swaths of Ukrainian territory in coming days, the United States said yesterday, potentially moving to cement control of much of the country’s east even as Russian forces struggle to capture key areas on the battlefield.
A move by the Kremlin to formally claim as part of Russia the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, along with the southern city of Kherson, amid an intense ongoing military battle could thrust the conflict into an unpredictable, even more explosive phase. It is not clear how Ukrainian forces and their allies would respond to such an attempt, which would echo the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 but, in a crucial difference, occur as forces loyal to Ukraine fight to retain control of their territory.
A senior US official said ‘‘highly credible’’ intelligence indicates that Russia will probably stage fraudulent referendums in mid-May in which citizens of Donetsk, Luhansk or Kherson appear to express support for leaving Ukraine and becoming part of Russia. After that, Russia would probably install leaders loyal to Moscow in those areas.
The votes would be an attempt to give the planned annexations a ‘‘veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy,’’ Michael Carpenter, the US ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told reporters at the State Department. He called the move ‘‘straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook’’ but declined to disclose the intelligence underlying the US prediction.
Russia had no immediate response to the allegations.
Moscow recognised the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, just before launching the invasion on February 24, sending Russian forces into those regions for ‘‘peacekeeping’’ purposes. In Kherson, the first major city captured by Russian forces, the Kremlin appears to be laying the groundwork for formally cementing its control, announcing a transition to Russian currency and – according to Britain’s Defence Ministry – preparing to install a puppet local government.
Western officials describe a Russian military under strain nine weeks into its offensive but still able to pound strategic areas of southern Ukraine, including the coastal city of Mariupol.
A US defence official said Russian troops were making ‘‘minimal progress at best’’ in their attempt to seize the Donbas region.
Taken together with an accelerating flow of Western weaponry for Ukrainian forces, the reports of logistics challenges and battlefield reversals suggest a taxing road ahead for Russia as it approaches its traditional May 9 Victory Day celebration. Analysts have suggested the date may present Putin an opportunity to offer his view of Russia’s war achievements to the Russian public.
The US defence official said that
Russia’s top military officer, General Valery Gerasimov, visited the Donbas region last week, but the Pentagon has not been able to confirm whether Gerasimov was wounded, as some reports have suggested.
Even as the fight for control of Donbas regions unfolds in slow motion, intense Russian attacks have continued on Mariupol.
Mykhailo Vershynin, head of the Donetsk regional patrol police, said that some 200 civilians, including about 20 children, remained trapped in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, where civilians and fighters have taken shelter in underground areas.
The Israeli government meanwhile responded with outrage to remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, of backing Nazism and suggesting that ‘‘Hitler also had Jewish blood’’.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Lavrov’s comments were ‘‘both unforgivable and outrageous’’. – Washington Post