Moscow In an hour-long speech on Monday evening, Russian President Vladimir Putin drew a radical line under the Minsk Agreement: Russia had done everything it could to preserve Ukraine’s territorial integrity and save the Minsk Agreement. “All in vain,” Putin complained in the speech broadcast live on television.
For this reason and because of the ongoing “genocide” against the Russian-speaking population in Donbass, he considers it necessary to take “the long overdue” decision to recognize the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) and to prepare a friendship treaty with both republics, according to the head of the Kremlin.
Putin had previously heaped serious allegations on both Ukraine and the West. He denied Ukraine’s historical right to exist anyway. It is a pure product of the Bolsheviks, after the collapse of the Soviet Union it degenerated into a hotbed of corruption, neo-Nazism and Russophobia, although Russia subsidized it with loans and cheap gas with 250 billion dollars until 2013.
The West, in turn, cheated Russia in the eastward expansion of NATO and is now building a new deployment area in Ukraine against Russia, Putin claimed. The Russian President reported on his demands for security guarantees in December, which the USA and NATO had largely ignored.
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Putin also warned that nuclear weapons could be manufactured in Ukraine. “We know that there have been reports that Ukraine wants to produce its own nuclear weapons. This is not an empty boast,” said the Kremlin chief. “Ukraine actually still has Soviet nuclear technologies and delivery systems for such weapons.”
Russia expects sanctions
Putin also accused NATO of beginning an “outrageous appropriation” of Ukraine. The West wants to open up Ukraine as a “scene of possible hostilities”.
The Kremlin chief was prepared for the fact that his decision would result in Western sanctions. But the punitive measures would have been introduced anyway, and the West would have found or invented an excuse for it in any case, simply because Russia is too big and too strong, according to Putin. Shortly after the end of his speech, the EU announced the sanctions.
Scholz and Macron informed
Russia’s head of state had previously informed Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron about his plans. The presidential administration in Moscow announced that both had reacted with disappointment.
His address to the people was the conclusion of a pre-determined script. In the first part, the heads of the separatist DPR and LPR Denis Puschilin and Leonid Pasetchnik appealed to Russia to recognize the independence of their “republics”. The National Security Council then met in Moscow, chaired by Putin.
The event was reportedly even broadcast live – an unprecedented event in the history of the Russian Security Council. However, observers noticed from the wristwatches of those involved that it was a recording.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had only explained in advance that this was not a routine Security Council meeting. The live transmission of the event then quickly made it clear in which direction it was going: Vladimir Putin had all members of the council step in front of the microphone – and practically all of them spoke in favor of recognizing the separatist “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR) and “Luhansk People’s Republic” ( LVR) off.
While the former FSB head Nikolai Patrushev, who is considered a hardliner, advocated at least waiting for the planned meeting between Putin and Biden, the majority wanted immediate recognition. Russia owes this to the children and women in Donbass, said the head of the Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko.
The Security Council said that neither Ukraine nor the West needed the Donbass. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said it was clear to Russia that the step would have serious consequences in view of the sanctions threatened by the West. In view of the situation, however, there is no other option than to recognize the areas.
The pressure on Russia will be unprecedented, Medvedev said. The hope is, however, that the conflict will cool down afterwards.
Medvedev: Russia has learned to live with the pressure
Medvedev recalled his time as president when the war with Georgia broke out in 2008. At that time, Russia had recognized the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as states and stationed thousands of soldiers there. Since then, Russia has learned to live with the pressure.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who just a few days ago still saw potential for negotiations in the talks with the USA, justified his support for the recognition of the sovereignty of the two provinces by saying that Kiev is not adhering to the Minsk Agreement. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy also made it known behind closed doors that Ukraine did not want to stick to it at all.
Russia is very aware of the consequences of recognizing the provinces in view of the sanctions threatened by the West.
(Photo: AP)
The most aggressive demand was made by Russia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Kolkoltsev: he called not only for the recognition of the existing separatist areas, but also for their restoration in the original borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In any case, this demand would mean war, as it would result in an invasion of the areas previously controlled by Kiev – that is well over half of the Donbass.
Similar procedure as in 2014 before Crimea was annexed
Several speakers also recalled Russia’s incorporation of the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014, which Moscow carried out despite protests from the West. Last week, the Russian parliament passed a resolution to Putin asking him to recognize the “Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics”.
Putin himself closed the Security Council meeting by saying that he had now heard all points of view. “I’ll make a decision later today,” he said.
It is possible that the actual decision was made before the meeting, and this only served to give Putin official backing. The Russian leadership acted similarly when it convened the upper and lower houses of parliament in 2014 to authorize Putin to intervene in Crimea.
Violence has increased significantly in the Donbass conflict zone. Government troops and pro-Russian separatists are shooting at each other. According to UN estimates, more than 14,000 people have died in the eight-year conflict, most of them in separatist-controlled territory.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba asked members of the UN Security Council for an emergency meeting in light of the latest developments. According to his wishes, steps should be discussed to guarantee the security of his country and to reduce tensions with Russia.
US President Joe Biden is consulting with his National Security Council, a government official in Washington told the Reuters news agency.
The Moscow stock exchange reacted to the session with dramatic price losses: the ruble fell by more than five percent against the euro and dollar. The stock indices fell by around ten percent.
With agency material
More: Finding the Spark – How Putin could justify an invasion