By Kevin Zhang
In a ceremony for the expansion of Russia’s borders, President Vladimir Putin signed documents that would effectively annex four regions in Ukraine – an act which has been declared illegal by Ukraine and its western backers.
Following the inking, Putin delivered a 37-minute speech in which he criticized a multitude of aspects about the west.
He reminisced about Russia’s historic military might, attacked Western colonialism ranging across a series of events from the 19th-century Opium Wars to the U.S. nuclear bombing of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in a speech that was met with applause and standing ovations.
He accused the West of Satanic practices of rejecting morality and religion, redirecting the speech towards the topic of gender identity.
“Do we really want to see perversions that lead to degradation and extinction be imposed on children in our schools from the earliest years, for it to be drilled into them that there are supposedly some genders besides women and men, and offered the chance to undergo sex change operations?” He directed the question to the citizens of Russia as well as the dignitaries in the Grand Kremlin Palace.
Denis Pushilin, leader of the breakaway region the Donetsk People’s Republic, said that the Ukrainian army was “trying at all costs to spoil our historic events”.
In the speech, Putin only briefly referenced the partial mobilization that he had declared last week, which had prompted thousands of able-bodied men to flee the country.
Russia only controls parts of the regions it has annexed. Dmitry Peskov, a senior Kremlin spokesman, was unable to say if Russia was annexing the entire regions or only areas held by its troops. With respect to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, he answered that he needed to clarify.
Similar to the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the annexations of these four Ukrainian regions hastily conducted through referendums, have been called shams, and even traditional Russian allies Serbia and Kazakhstan have not yet recognized them.
