Russian President Vladimir Putin signed laws that claimed four regions of Ukraine as Russia's territory while his country's military struggled Wednesday to control the illegally annexed areas.
The documents finalizing the annexation, carried out in violation of international laws, were published on a Russian government website. In a defiant move, the Kremlin held the door open for further land grabs in Ukraine.
Peskov did not specify which additional Ukrainian territories Moscow is eyeing for attempted annexation and he wouldn't say if the Kremlin planned to organize more such "referendums." The head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, Andriy Yermak, wrote on his Telegram channel shortly after Putin signed the annexation legislation approved by Russia's parliament that "the worthless decisions of the terrorist country are not worth the paper they are signed on."Zelenskyy responded to the annexation by announcing Ukraine's fast-track application to join NATO.
However, the Ukrainian military said the Ukrainian flag had been raised above seven Kherson region villages previously occupied by the Russians. In central Ukraine, multiple explosions rocked Bila Tserkva, a city about 80 kilometers south of the capital, Kyiv. The blasts set off fires at what were described as infrastructure facilities, regional leader Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram.Russia has increasingly employed suicide drones in recent weeks, posing a new challenge to Ukrainian defenses. The unmanned vehicles can stay aloft for long periods of time before diving into targets and detonating their payloads at the last moment.
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