Russia recognises Ukraine-held areas as part of rebel regions

Russia has announced that its recognition of independence for areas in eastern Ukraine extends to territory currently held by Ukrainian forces – further raising the stakes amid Western fears that a fully fledged invasion of Ukraine is imminent.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said Russia has recognised the rebel regions’ independence “in borders that existed when they proclaimed” their independence in 2014.

Ukrainian forces later reclaimed control of a large part of both regions during a nearly eight-year conflict that has killed more than 14,000 people.

The announcement comes a day after Russia said it would recognise their independence – but did not say exactly what it considered the borders of those areas to be.

The move was widely seen in the West to presage a Russian invasion.

Russia has amassed an estimated 150,000 troops near Ukraine in recent weeks, and Western leaders have warned that Moscow planned to attack.

Western leaders have denounced the move and said they are preparing to announce sanctions.

Late on Monday, convoys of armoured vehicles were seen rolling across the separatist-controlled territories.

It was not immediately clear if they were Russian.

Russian officials have not yet acknowledged any troop deployments to the rebel east, but Vladislav Brig, a member of the separatist local council in Donetsk, told reporters that the Russian troops had already moved in, taking up positions in the region’s north and west.

Ever since the conflict erupted weeks after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine and its Western allies have accused Moscow of backing the separatists with troops and weapons, claims it has denied, saying that Russians who fought in the east were volunteers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move on Monday formalises Russia’s hold on the regions and gives it a free hand to deploy its forces there.

And Russia set the stage for a quick move to secure its hold on the regions on Tuesday with new legislation that would allow the deployment of troops there.

The Bills, which are set to quickly sail through both houses of the Russian parliament, envisage military ties, including possible deployment of Russian military bases in the separatist regions.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to project calm, telling the country in an address overnight: “We are not afraid of anyone or anything. We don’t owe anyone anything. And we won’t give anything to anyone.”

His foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba will be in Washington on Tuesday to meet US secretary of state Antony Blinken, the State Department said.

“The Kremlin recognised its own aggression against Ukraine,” Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Twitter, describing Moscow’s move as a “New Berlin Wall” and urging the West to quickly slap Russia with sanctions.

The White House responded quickly, issuing an executive order to prohibit US investment and trade in the separatist regions, and additional measures – probably sanctions – were to be announced on Tuesday.

Those sanctions are independent of what Washington has prepared in the event of a Russian invasion, according to a senior administration official.

Other Western allies also said they were planning to announce sanctions.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday the UK will introduce “immediate” economic sanctions against Russia, and warned that Mr Putin is bent on “a full-scale invasion of Ukraine … that would be absolutely catastrophic”.

Mr Johnson said Mr Putin had “completely torn up international law” and British sanctions would target not just the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk but “Russian economic interests as hard as we can”.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said “Russian troops have entered in Donbas”, adding that “I wouldn’t say that (it is) a fully fledged invasion, but Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil” and the EU would decide on sanctions later on Tuesday.

Polish defence minister Mariusz Błaszczak also said in a radio interview on Tuesday he could confirm that Russian forces entered the territories, describing it as a violation of Ukraine’s borders and international law.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday said China would “continue to stay in engagement with all parties”, continuing to steer clear from committing to back Russia despite the close ties between Moscow and Beijing.

While Ukraine and the West said the Russian recognition of the rebel regions shatters a 2015 peace deal, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia challenged that, noting that Moscow is not a party to the Minsk agreement and arguing that it could still be implemented if Ukraine chooses so.

The 2015 deal that was brokered by France and Germany and signed in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, required Ukraine to offer a sweeping self-rule to the rebel regions in a diplomatic coup for Russia after a series of Ukrainian military defeats.

Many in Ukraine resented the deal as a betrayal of national interests and a blow to the country’s integrity, and its implementation has stalled.

Mr Putin announced the move in an hour-long televised speech, blaming the US and its allies for the current crisis and describing Ukraine’s bid to join Nato as an existential challenge to Russia.

“Ukraine’s membership in Nato poses a direct threat to Russia’s security,” he said.

Russia says it wants Western guarantees that Nato will not allow Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to join as members – and Mr Putin said on Monday that a simple moratorium on Ukraine’s accession would not be enough.

Moscow has also demanded the alliance halt weapons deployments to Ukraine and roll back its forces from eastern Europe – demands flatly rejected by the West.

Mr Putin warned on Monday that the Western rejection of Moscow’s demands gives Russia the right to take other steps to protect its security.

Sweeping through more than a century of history, Mr Putin painted today’s Ukraine as a modern construct used by the West to contain Russia despite the neighbours’ inextricable links.

In a stark warning to Ukraine, the Russian leader claimed that it has unfairly inherited Russia’s historic land granted to it by the Communist rulers of the Soviet Union and mocked its effort to shed the Communist past in a so-called “decommunisation” campaign.

“We are ready to show you what the real decommunisation would mean for Ukraine,” Mr Putin added ominously in an apparent signal of his readiness to raise new land claims.

With an estimated 150,000 Russian troops massed on three sides of Ukraine, the US has warned that Moscow has already decided to invade.

Still, President Joe Biden and Mr Putin tentatively agreed to a meeting brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron in a last-ditch effort to avoid war.

Mr Macron’s office said Mr Biden and Mr Putin had “accepted the principle of such a summit”, to be followed by a broader meeting that would include other “relevant stakeholders to discuss security and strategic stability in Europe”.

If Russia moves in, the meeting will be off, but the prospect of a face-to-face summit resuscitated hopes in diplomacy to prevent a conflict that could devastate Ukraine and cause huge economic damage across Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy.

Tensions have continued to fly high in eastern Ukraine, with more shelling reported along the tense line of contact between the rebels and Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine’s military said two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another 12 were wounded by shelling over the last 24 hours.

It has rejected the rebel claims of shelling residential areas and insisted that Ukrainian forces were not returning fire.