(CNN) President Vladimir Putin is set to sign agreements Friday that will absorb into Russia thousands of square miles of Ukrainian territory in what will be the largest forcible annexation of land in Europe since 1945.

The agreements will be signed at a ceremony at the Kremlin, three days after hastily-conducted referendums concluded in the four areas of Ukraine that Moscow will now consider Russian territory.

Putin will deliver a speech and meet with Russian-backed leaders of the four occupied regions, according to the Kremlin.


Ukraine and its western allies have categorically rejected the planned annexation of the four regions -- Donetsk, Luhansk and much of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, a swathe of Ukrainian land that contains heavy industry, rich farmland and a critical freshwater conduit for Crimea.

Donetsk and Luhansk are home to two breakaway republics that Moscow has backed since 2014, while Kherson and parts of Zaporizhzhia have been controlled by Russian forces since shortly after the invasion began in late February.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has asserted that if the Kremlin presses ahead with annexation, any negotiation with Putin will be impossible.

Indeed, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said last week that once the so-called republics were integrated into the Russian Federation, "not one future leader of Russia, not one official will be able to reverse these decisions."

And once the Russian flag flies over these areas, they qualify for the same level of protection as any other part of the Russian Federation, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated Saturday.


As Alexander Baunov at the Carnegie Endowment put it last week, the message from the Kremlin to Ukraine's allies is this: "You chose to fight us in Ukraine, now try to fight us in Russia itself, or, to be precise, what we call Russia."

The second part of that message -- spelled out in Putin's speech announcing partial mobilization -- is that any attack on what is considered Russian territory invites the full range of retaliation.

In 2020, Putin signed a decree updating Russia's nuclear doctrine that allowed for the use of nuclear weapons "in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat."

The definition of that threat is not exactly clear, but last week Putin issued his most explicit warning yet: "The territorial integrity of our homeland, our independence and freedom will be ensured, I will emphasize this again, with all the means at our disposal. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing winds can turn in their direction."

Source: https://amp cnn com/cnn/2022/09/29/europe/annexation-russia-ukraine-analysis-intl/index.html