Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed occupied territories in Ukraine as part of the Russian Federation, blasting the U.S. and its allies as “satanic,” hinting at his willingness to use nuclear weapons, and signaling a sharp escalation in the war as Kyiv vowed to recover its occupied lands.
The rules-based international order was a sinister Western design, he told his audience, one that was rooted in Russophobia. The West itself has “embraced Satanism,” forced drug addiction, gender ambiguity and “the organized hunts of people as if they’re animals” — the latter either a strange reference to American mass shootings or the popularity of Netflix’s “Squid Game.” Nevertheless, such a fallen civilization still had the wherewithal to try and colonize Russia and steal its precious natural resources, he continued before comparing the United States to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, accusing it of setting a “precedent” in being the only nation to use nuclear weapons. Then he quoted from his favorite Russian fascist philosopher, Ivan Ilyin: “I believe in the spiritual forces of the Russian people, their spirit — my spirit, its fate is my fate, its suffering is my grief, its flowering is my joy.”
Bringing Russian-controlled Luhansk and areas of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia under Moscow’s control after a series of disputed referendums is a pivotal part of the Russian leader’s war goals. It effectively provides Moscow a land bridge to Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014, which is home to its Black Sea fleet. Seizing Crimea represented the first action of its kind in Europe since the end of World War II, triggering Western sanctions against Russia and upending long-held assumptions about security on the continent.
Claiming the new territories intensifies the crisis in a way that could leave Mr. Putin short of viable off-ramps as the ground war begins to turn against Russia, analysts said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already pledged to retake the occupied areas, driving Russian forces from lands that he says are rightfully Ukraine’s. On Friday he asked NATO to expedite his country’s application to join the security bloc, saying Ukraine was already a de facto ally of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, though U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Ukraine would have to follow the established process.
Western leaders, including President Biden, have been quick to condemn Mr. Putin’s move, however.
“He can’t seize his neighbor’s territory and get away with it. It’s as simple as that,” Mr. Biden said at the White House on Friday as the U.S. government announced fresh sanctions. “America is fully prepared with our NATO allies to defend every single inch of NATO territory. Every single inch. So, Mr. Putin: Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. Every inch.”
Russian forces have suffered severe setbacks on the battlefields of Ukraine in recent weeks, however, pressuring Mr. Putin, analysts say, and prompting him to launch a mass mobilization of reservists, along with many other fighting-age men who have been swept up in the call-ups.
Many Russian men who have the resources to leave have already taken flights or crossed borders to Kazakhstan, Finland, Georgia and elsewhere to evade the mobilization. A rapid Ukrainian offensive has now retaken some 3,500 square miles of territory that Russia had spent months securing, with Ukrainian forces now pushing slowly toward Russian positions in Luhansk.
On Friday, they were close to encircling Russian troops in Lyman, a strategic town in eastern Ukraine, Russian military bloggers close to the Kremlin said. Russian forces remained in control of the town but faced a “high probability of retreat” from the area, said one of the bloggers, Roman Saponkov.
Losing Lyman, an important logistics hub for Russian forces, would be a major blow to the Kremlin’s war effort in eastern Ukraine.
Sporadic protests have flared across the country, including in some of the more remote regions. On Monday, a 25-year-old Russian man opened fire at a military-recruiting station in Siberia, critically wounding its commander, hours after another man rammed a car into the entrance of a different recruitment center then set it alight with Molotov cocktails.
Instead of dwelling on the Russian military’s problems, Mr. Putin used his address to excoriate the West, to rapturous applause from the political leaders and government officials assembled at the Kremlin. In particular, he accused Washington of ignoring international law when it suited U.S. interests and of trying to cement America’s hegemony across the globe, at times veering into theological discussions of right and wrong.
“The dictatorship of the Western elites is directed against all societies, including the peoples of the Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to everyone,” Mr. Putin said, warming to his theme. “Such a complete denial of man—the overthrow of faith and traditional values, the suppression of freedom—acquires the features of a ‘reverse religion,’ outright satanism.”
Some regions had already begun distributing Russian passports before referendums were held over the past week to authorize the takeover. Ukraine and Western nations described the voting as a sham.
Opinion polls have suggested that military mobilization would be especially unpopular with Russians, but analysts have said Mr. Putin had few options given the extent of the Russian army’s losses, and a desire among Russian nationalists to deploy more resources to the front lines in Ukraine.
In the meantime, Moscow’s economic advantage over Ukraine is beginning to slip away.
After the invasion in February, Russia managed to weather a storm of Western sanctions thanks to a surge in energy prices, driving up the value of its currency against the dollar. But that windfall appears to be fading as prices fall as the global economic outlook deteriorates. Its federal government budget fell into deficit last month because of the falling revenue. Since then oil prices have declined further, and Russia has stopped most of its remaining natural-gas exports to Europe.
Mr. Biden called a series of leaks on the Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Europe a “deliberate act of sabotage,” echoing an assessment delivered by NATO on Thursday. He didn’t say who he believes is responsible for the alleged sabotage and ignored follow-up questions from reporters. The president said he is working with NATO allies to investigate the incident and protect critical infrastructure.
The mobilization of some 300,000 additional soldiers, meanwhile, is placing more strain on the economy at a time when Ukraine is continuing to receive military and economic support from the West.