Russia Moves to Annex Occupied Lands as Ukraine Presses Offensive
Moscow plans to stage votes in four occupied regions to annex them as Russian territory
Officials in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine announced plans for Russia to annex four regions in the country’s east and south, while Moscow moved to clear the way for a broader mobilization and threatened attacks on NATO as the Kremlin grappled with Ukraine’s swift advance.
Russian-controlled parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions of Ukraine said they will hold three-day votes on joining Russia starting this Friday, Moscow’s latest effort to consolidate its hold on territory it took months to capture but now risks losing to Ukraine’s forces. One other region, Zaporizhzhia, didn’t specify a date for its vote.
The country’s lower house of parliament also approved legislation that could help address its shortage of troops on the battlefield, raising fears that it could announce a full-scale mobilization possibly within days.
Since Ukraine’s lightning offensive through Russian-held territory in the northeast earlier this month, its leadership has reiterated a pledge to liberate all occupied territories and capitalize on the momentum it has achieved.
In his daily video address on Monday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the country’s armed forces were working to stabilize their hold in the liberated Kharkiv region and were causing Russian forces to panic.
“We warned you—Russian soldiers in Ukraine have just two options: flight from our land or capture,” he said.
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed head of the occupied Donetsk region in east Ukraine, said Tuesday on Russian state television that he was actively working to hold a vote. Authorities in Kherson, a region under partial Russian control in southern Ukraine, also reiterated their desire for an immediate referendum, according to comments carried by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Russia has for years been distributing passports to residents of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, proxy states that carved themselves out of eastern Ukraine during a Russian-fomented armed conflict that began in 2014. Moscow has spent vast resources cementing its rule there.
But the Ukrainian military offensive in the south, north and east, which has liberated the northeastern Kharkiv region and taken back more than 3,000 sq. miles of territory, is prompting Russian collaborators in occupied areas to vacillate in their plans and increasingly to admit that the security situation is unstable.
Russian-allied officials in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the south initially signaled that referendums would be held on Sept. 11, but when Ukraine swept through the northeastern Kharkiv region and captured villages en route to the city of Kherson earlier this month, they said the votes would be postponed.
“We have prepared for the voting, and we wanted to hold the referendum in the nearest future, but due to the developments happening at the moment, I think we will pause,” the Russian-appointed deputy governor of Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told TASS news agency on Sept. 5.
The initiative has received support from hawkish members of Russia’s political establishment, who argue that making occupied parts of Ukraine into parts of Russia proper would embolden Russia and give legitimacy to what it could portray as retaliatory strikes against its territory by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-backed forces.
“Today—a referendum, tomorrow—recognition as part of Russia, the day after tomorrow—strikes against Russian territory become fully-fledged war by Ukraine and NATO against Russia, which unties Russia’s hands in every way,” Margarita Simonyan, a Russian propagandist who heads the state-controlled TV channel RT, wrote Monday on Telegram.
The calls are being amplified by Russian officials who are angry over Russia’s humiliation and endorsing moves that might escalate the conflict. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, wrote on Telegram Tuesday that the incorporation of new territories into Russia would become irreversible even under future presidents by amending the constitution. Mr. Medvedev also said interference on Russian territory amounts to a crime that would allow Moscow “to use all means of self-defense.”
In a move that appeared to ease the legal path to mobilization in Russia, the country’s parliament on Tuesday advanced legislation that tightens penalties for evading mobilization, desertion, surrender and looting during wartime. The lower house, the State Duma, approved amendments to bring in the concepts of mobilization and martial law to the criminal code. However, the proposed legislation still needs to go through the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, and receive Russian President Vladimir Putin’s signature.
Under the proposed law, failure to show up for military service or desertion will be punished by up to 10 years in prison. Looting will be punishable by up to 15 years in jail.
The debate over whether to annex parts of Ukraine comes as Kyiv’s advance slows but continues to push Russia out of strategic areas such as a swath of land east of the Oskil River in the Kharkiv region, and as Russia scrambles to find the additional manpower to continue its war.
However, the proxy states that Russia recognized as independent in February don’t entirely control the areas of Ukraine that they claim as their sovereign territory. While their recognition could bolster the Kremlin’s false narrative about “liberating” rightfully Russian territories that it could claim are occupied by Ukraine, it could highlight the fact that it is unable to take over territory it claims as its own.
“Partial annexation at this stage would also place the Kremlin in the strange position of demanding that Ukrainian forces unoccupy ‘Russian’ territory, and the humiliating position of being unable to enforce that demand,” said the U.S.-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War. “It remains very unclear that Russian President Vladimir Putin would be willing to place himself in such a bind for the dubious benefit of making it easier to threaten NATO or Ukraine with escalation he remains highly unlikely to conduct at this stage.”
Annexation would placate the many Russian public figures who have been calling for Moscow to stop relying on dwindling reserves of trained soldiers in its campaign against a country benefiting from full-scale mobilization, and move to announcing a mobilization of its own that would draft into the ranks of its forces a pool potentially numbering millions of fighting-age men.
Russia has referred to its invasion of Ukraine from the outset as a special military operation, but declaring it a war, as Ms. Simonyan hinted, would broaden the political options at the Kremlin’s disposal including the capacity to frame attacks on Russian-held territory as attacks on Russia itself, analysts say.
It could also make it easier for Russia to conduct a mobilization on occupied Ukrainian territory before taking the politically dangerous move of announcing a mobilization at home. Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed head in Kherson, said Tuesday that “it is necessary to create volunteer battalions” to shore up defenses against Ukraine.
The prospects for a diplomatic solution to the conflict have been dim for months. After meeting Mr. Putin at a security summit in Uzbekistan last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with PBS that the Russian president had signaled a readiness to bring the war to a close.
“We had very extensive discussions with him,” Mr. Erdogan said. “And he is actually showing me that he’s willing to end this as soon as possible.”
Still, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that there were currently no prospects of a political and diplomatic settlement.
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at Matthew.Luxmoore@wsj.com and Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com