KYIV — Russian President
Vladimir Putin said
Wednesday that he expected the situation to “stabilize” in Ukrainian regions
annexed by the Kremlin after Moscow suffered military setbacks and lost several
key towns to Kyiv.
اضافة اعلان
He also ordered his government to seize control over
Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in the Russian-controlled region of
Zaporizhzhia with
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi
en route to Kyiv for consultations on the facility.
Ukraine earlier
claimed victories over Russian troops in the eastern region of Lugansk as the
Kremlin vowed to recapture territory lost in a lightning Ukrainian
counteroffensive.
In recent weeks, Ukraine’s forces, bolstered by
Western weapons, have wrested Russian troops out of a string of towns and
villages in the southern Kherson region and the eastern separatist strongholds
of Lugansk and Donetsk.
“We are working on the assumption that the situation
in the new territories will stabilize,” Putin told Russian teachers during a
televised video call.
Just hours earlier, the Ukrainian-appointed head of
Lugansk Sergiy Gaiday announced that the “de-occupation of the Lugansk region
has already officially started”.
A senior Russian lawmaker called on military
officials to tell the truth about developments on the ground in Ukraine
following the string of bruising defeats.
“We need to stop lying,” the chairman of the lower
house of parliament’s defense committee, Andrei Kartapolov, told a journalist
from state-run media.
“The reports of the defense ministry do not change.
The people know. Our people are not stupid. This can lead to loss of
credibility.”
Regions to be ‘Russian forever’
Putin on Wednesday signed
into legislation his annexation of four Ukrainian territories — including
Lugansk — as the EU agreed a new round of sanctions against Moscow in response.
Kremlin spokesman
Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would
take back land it lost to Kyiv within the annexed regions, vowing they would be
“Russian forever and will not be returned”.
Putin initially inked agreements with the
Moscow-installed leaders of the four regions to become subjects of the Russian
Federation, despite condemnation from Kyiv and the West.
The four territories — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk,
and Zaporizhzhia — create a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean
Peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Together, the five regions make up around 20 percent
of Ukraine.
The Kremlin annexed the territories after hastily
conducting referendums, denounced as void by Kyiv and its Western allies, but
has yet to confirm what areas exactly of those regions are being annexed.
Russian forces do not have full control over Kherson
or Zaporizhzhia and recently lost control of several settlements in Donetsk.
The latest battlefield maps from Moscow showed that
Russian troops had left many areas in Kherson, including along the west bank of
the Dnipro River.
‘Lived like rats’
In Kharkiv, the maps
indicated that Moscow’s forces had almost entirely abandoned the east bank of
the Oskil River, potentially giving the Ukrainians space to shell key Russian
troop transportation and supply corridors.
While Russian authorities remain largely silent
about the extent of the setbacks, war correspondents of pro-Kremlin media
admitted that troops were in trouble.
“There won’t be any
good news in the near future. Not from the Kherson front nor from Lugansk,”
newspaper journalist Alexander Kots wrote on his Telegram channel with more
than 640,000 followers.
In the town of Lyman, Ukrainian police officers were
moving back in to the station used until last week by the Russian occupation
force.
“They lived like rats,” said the town’s police
chief, Igor Ugnivenko, returning to his pre-invasion office and surveying the
debris.
In front of the central administration building
queues of mainly elderly residents built up for two ambulances distributing
meager humanitarian aid.
“I don’t know if the situation is better or worse,”
said 62-year-old Tatiana Slavuta of the town’s recapture by Ukrainian forces.
“All the shops are closed, we don’t have money, we
don’t have light. Nothing.
“We don’t see any change,” she added before
correcting herself and brightening. “At least now there’s silence — no shelling.”
‘Now there’s silence’
Putin’s decision to wrest
control of the Zaporizhzhia plant comes after months of tensions around the
facility with both sides blaming each other for strikes that had raised fears
of a radiation disaster.
“On our way to Kyiv for important meetings,” IAEA
head Rafael Grossi wrote on Twitter, saying the need for a protection zone
around the site was “more urgent than ever”.
On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden told Zelensky
that another $625 million in military assistance was on the way.
The new batch includes more HIMARS multiple rocket
launchers, which have allowed Ukraine to strike Russian command depots and arms
stockpiles far behind the frontline.
From the EU, there were no details about the nature
of fresh sanctions agreed against Russia.
The latest package — the eighth since Russia’s
invasion in February — is now going through a final approval procedure which,
if no objections emerge, will be published and come into effect on Thursday,
the Czech Republic’s EU ambassador said on Twitter.
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