‘The West has let their mask slip and revealed their true nature!’ That was Vladimir Putin’s message to a hall of vacant-looking officials at the Kremlin this afternoon. The Russian president gathered the great and the good of Russia to reveal the formal annexation of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaphorizhzhia and Kherson. But Putin’s audience in the hall would be forgiven for quickly losing sight of this. This was a speech aimed at Russia’s enemies in the West.
Putin justified the expansion of the Russian Federation by insisting that the four now-annexed Ukrainian territories had voted in favour of joining Russia: ‘This is the will of 20 million people’, he said. The inhabitants of this land had a ‘right’ to rejoin Russia based on a shared history going back to the times of ancient Rus, Catherine the Great and the Second World War, according to Putin.
Practically hopping with rage, Putin then turned to the problem of the West
Practically hopping with rage, Putin then turned to the problem of the West. ‘I
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