The Kremlin said on Friday that attacks against any part of the swathe of Ukraine that President Vladimir Putin was about to annex would be considered aggression against Russia itself, adding that Russia would fight to take the whole of the eastern Donbas region, according to Reuters.
President Vladimir Putin is due to proclaim the annexation of nearly a fifth of Ukraine on Friday, escalating his seven-month war and taking it into an unpredictable new phase.
Moscow is declaring Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, largely or partly occupied by Russian or Russian-backed forces, to be part of Russia.
Asked by reporters if an attack by Ukraine on the territories Russia is claiming as its land would be considered an attack on Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It would not be anything else.”
Putin said last week he was willing to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity”.
Russia is moving to annex the regions after holding what it called referendums in the occupied areas of Ukraine. Western governments and Kyiv said the hastily organized votes breached international law and were coercive and wholly unrepresentative.
The exact details of Russia’s annexation are unclear but it appears that Russia is laying claim to about 109,000 sq km (42,000 sq miles) of Ukrainian territory, or about 18%, in addition to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Asked what would happen to the territory not under Russian control, Peskov said: “It is to be liberated.” He said the whole of the Donetsk region would become part of Russia.
But Peskov was less clear about whether or not Russia would lay claim to the whole of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which were recognized by Putin on Thursday as independent states.
“We will clarify everything today,” Peskov said. Russia currently controls about 70% of Zaporizhzhia region.