Sputnik News
Vladimir Putin has expressed support for the incorporation of the Donbass and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions into Russia.
"Dear residents of Russia, residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, the people of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions...you know that referendums have taken place. The results have been calculated. The results are known. People have made their choice, an unequivocal choice," Putin said, speaking at a ceremony in the Kremlin on Friday.
Putin expressed confidence that lawmakers gathered in the hall would speedily support formal laws on the new territories' formal accession into Russia.
"I am sure that the Federal Assembly will support the constitutional laws on the admission and formation in Russia of four new regions, of four new subjects of the Russian Federation, because this is the will of millions of people," Putin said. "This is of course their right, their inalienable right, enshrined in Article 1 of the United Nations Charter, where the principle of equality and self-determination of peoples is stated directly," he added.
This right is also based on the historical unity of generations of residents of the four regions with Russia, from the period of Ancient Rus to Catherine the Great, to the Second World War, Putin said.
Message to Kiev and Its Western Sponsors
The president recalled that the people of the Donbass have faced eight years of "genocide, shelling and blockade," while in Kherson and Zaporozhye, authorities attempted to foment hatred toward Russia and to everything Russia. While referendums were being held, he said, Kiev threatened to target women schoolteachers working in election commissions, and repressions against millions of people who took part in the plebiscites.
"I would like everyone, including the authorities in Kiev and their real masters in the West, to hear me and remember that the people of [the four territories] are becoming our citizens. Forever," Putin said. "We call on the Kiev regime to immediately cease fire, cease all hostilities - the war it unleashed in 2014 and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this," Putin said.
The president called on Ukraine's authorities to respect the choice made by the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye, and warned that Russia would protect its territories using all available means.
Putin promised that the cities and settlements, housing stock, schools, hospitals, theatres and museums damaged in the fighting would be restored, as would industry and infrastructure.
The West continues to seek out new opportunities to strike at, weaken and dismember Russia and to give rise to tensions between its people, something "they always dreamed about," he added. The West is ready to go to any length "to preserve the neocolonial system which allows it to live parasitically - and factually to pillage the world thanks to the power of the dollar and the technological dictate. To collect tribute from humanity," Putin said.
"It is precisely this greed, this effort to preserve its unrestricted power, which serves as the real reason for the hybrid war being waged against Russia by the collective West, Putin said. "They do not need Russia in principle."
The US and its allies are counting on their continued impunity, according to Putin.
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