Factbox-Russia prepares to formally annex 15% of Ukraine By Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin is making ready to formally annex round 15% of Ukrainian territory after referendums on becoming a member of Russia in areas managed by Russian forces or Russian-backed separatists.

CAN THE WEST STOP PUTIN?

Neither the West nor Ukraine can cease Putin claiming the areas, although the USA and its allies say they need Ukraine to defeat Russia on the battlefield – and can assist it achieve this by supplying weapons, however not NATO troops.

The USA is ready to impose further financial prices on Russia along with U.S. allies if Moscow strikes ahead with annexing parts of Ukrainian territory, the White Home stated.

After imposing extreme sanctions on Russia, although, there may be not an excessive amount of financial punishment left to inflict except the USA might get China and India to conform to some kind of cap on the value of Russian vitality.

The West might ship extra superior weapons to Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated Ukraine had acquired subtle air defence techniques, often called Nationwide Superior Floor-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), from the USA.

Zelenskiy has repeatedly warned that “pseudo-referendums” on annexation by Russia would destroy any likelihood of peace talks.

One of many senior figures in his administration, Mykhailo Podolyak, known as on Tuesday for any referendums to be met by a rise in worldwide financial sanctions on Russia and elevated arms provides to Ukraine, together with Military Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, a guided missile with a variety of 300 km.

WHICH LAND WILL BE ANNEXED?

Russia plans to annex round 15% of Ukraine that its forces management in addition to about 3% of Ukraine that it doesn’t management – together with frontlines the place Ukrainian troopers are nonetheless preventing, for instance within the Donetsk area.

The areas embrace:

* A giant chunk of japanese Ukraine, often called Donbas, the place excessive concentrations of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians stay.

The 2 components of the Donbas now embrace the self-styled Donetsk (DPR) and the Luhansk Folks’s Republics (LPR), which Putin recognised as unbiased states simply earlier than the Feb. 24 invasion. A frontline runs by way of Donetsk.

Referendums have been held in 2014 within the two areas on secession from Ukraine.

* Russian-controlled Kherson area.

* Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia.

Taken collectively, Russia can be annexing at the least 90,000 sq. km of Ukrainian territory. That’s an space across the identical measurement of Hungary or Portugal.

Russia, which recognised Ukraine’s post-Soviet borders within the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, annexed Crimea in 2014. With Crimea and the territory within the 4 different areas, Russia would have annexed at the least one fifth of Ukrainian territory.

HOW QUICKLY COULD FORMAL ANNEXATION HAPPEN?

Quick. After the referendums, the Russian-backed leaders of the areas might ask to be included in Russia. Putin might swiftly approve and the laws in Moscow can be handed quick.

After Russian forces on Feb. 27, 2014 took management of Crimea, which has an ethnic Russian majority and was transferred to Ukraine in Soviet instances, a referendum on becoming a member of Russia was held on March 16.

Crimea’s leaders declared a 97% vote to secede from Ukraine and be part of Russia. Russia formally added Crimea on March 21, lower than a month after invading it.

WHAT DOES PUTIN SAY?

Putin says the Russians and the Russian-speakers of Ukraine have been persecuted by Kyiv and that he won’t ever give them as much as “executioners”. Ukraine denies it has persecuted the Russian audio system, lots of whom look to Moscow.

The Kremlin chief denies a definite Ukrainian id, saying it’s a synthetic assemble partly the results of Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who, after the Purple Military took Kyiv, instituted the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after the collapse of the Russian empire.

Within the 2001 Ukrainian census, 17% of individuals recognized themselves as Russian with 78% of individuals figuring out as Ukrainian. Ukrainian is by far essentially the most spoken language within the nation adopted by Russian.

The battle in japanese Ukraine started in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed forces preventing Ukraine’s armed forces.

About 14,000 folks have been killed in japanese Ukraine between 2014 and the tip of 2021, in accordance with the he UN Human Rights Workplace, together with 3,106 civilians.