President Vladimir Putin and his lockstep deputy chairman of the federal Security Council Dmitry Medvedev issued separate statements on September 30 aimed at whitewashing the unrecognized annexation one year ago of four partially occupied regions of Ukraine and seemingly threatening another land grab.
Putin said in an address released overnight that residents of the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed in September 2022 “made their choice -- to be with their Fatherland.”
One year ago, Moscow unilaterally declared Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson to be part of Russia.
The United Nations continues to recognize all four regions -- along with Crimea, which was occupied and annexed in 2014 -- as Ukrainian territory.
Throughout its 19-month-old defense against Russia's full-scale invasion that began in February 2022, Kyiv has insisted that it will claw back all of its territory, including Crimea.
In his anniversary remarks, Putin claimed that the referendum under occupation and the rest of the process was “in full accordance with international norms."
Then, former Russian Prime Minister and ex-President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to continue the invasion and even hinted that Russia could try to annex more of Ukraine.
Medvedev, who is now the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, invoked the Kremlin's talking points to justify the invasion of Ukraine and said the "special military operation" -- Moscow's term for the invasion -- "will continue."
"Victory will be ours," he added, according to AFP. "And there will be more new regions within Russia."
Russian officials routinely use the term "new regions" in reference to the illegally annexed Ukrainian regions.
Russian authorities held voting in occupied parts of Ukraine earlier this month in an effort to tighten their grip on the territories in a vote Kyiv and the West have condemned as "fake" and a "propaganda exercise."
The voting for Russian-installed legislatures in the illegally occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya began on September 8 and concluded on September 10, coinciding with local elections in Russia.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry condemned the Russian-orchestrated voting, saying the "sham elections in the temporarily occupied territories" will have "no legal consequences and will not bring any changes in the international status of Ukrainian territories seized by Russian military forces."
Ukraine has recently reported advances in its counteroffensive to drive Russian forces out of the occupied territories.