Correspondent in Moscow
Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the pro-Russian separatist territories in eastern Ukraine on Monday evening, after having postponed the summit with Joe Biden announced a few hours earlier by the Elysee.
This meeting was considered
"premature"
by the Russian President, who, in the afternoon, convened his Security Council, before, in the evening, taking a decisive step towards war, thereby turning the back to diplomacy.
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Before solemnly signing the decree amounting more or less to the annexation of a large part of the Ukrainian Donbass, Vladimir Putin embarked on a history lesson supposed to justify his aims on the lands of his neighbor.
The Ukrainian Soviet Republic was created by Lenin, he recalled.
But, he explained, Comrade Vladimir IIitch had at that time
"disadvantaged"
his motherland.
He, Vladimir Putin, therefore intends to continue correcting his Bolshevik predecessor.
And to accuse Ukraine of being
“an American colony”
run
“by a puppet regime”
.
“This country
,” he continued,
in its vain quest for a Western civilization, has sunk into corruption, poverty, with an industry close to bankruptcy”.
And to continue his indictment against a Ukraine undermined by clans of oligarchs, wanting to marginalize the Russian-speaking population, and seeking to get rid of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Vladimir Putin even threatened to punish the perpetrators of the fire in which some forty pro-Russian activists died in 2014, during clashes with supporters of an independent Ukraine.
A sentence heavy with meaning, because it seems to mean that the head of the Russian army is looking beyond the Donbass, to a Ukrainian city on the shores of the Black Sea...
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Earlier in the day, on February 21, 2022, Vladimir Putin had wanted to gather his Security Council in the vast Saint Catherine room of the Kremlin, the same one where he signed in 2014 the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
It was in this chosen setting that the Russian president announced to the representatives of his "force services" that he was going to decide the same day on Russia's relations with the two separatist territories in the east of the Ukraine, the “Donetsk People's Republic” (DNR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LNR).
A few hours earlier, he had been challenged by the leaders of these two pro-Russian entities, asking him to recognize their independence.
The objective is to establish
“defence cooperation”
with Russia, as the separatist leaders Denis Pushilin and Leonid Passetchnik have made clear.
Such a decision, which buries the very laborious peace process of the Minsk agreements, also theoretically allows Moscow to come
"legally"
to the aid of the pro-Russian populations, victims of
"genocide"
, as Vladimir Putin recently affirmed.
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The Russian president, for whom Ukraine is a crucial subject, knows the fears of Westerners: that an
"incident"
, whatever it is, serves as a pretext for an escalation and an invasion of Ukraine by its Russian neighbor.
And such incidents, which maintain tension, were not lacking on Monday.
In Donetsk, where ceasefire violations have been legion in recent days on both sides of the front line, a hospital in the northwest of the city was hit.
Ukraine declared the loss of two of its soldiers.
A Russian border post was also destroyed.
Above all, Russia said on Monday that it had killed five "saboteurs" from Ukraine on its soil, which further fueled concerns about Moscow's direct military involvement on the ground.
According to the Russian army, Ukrainian army vehicles had entered Russian territory to evacuate their men.
Charges rejected by Kiev, which on Monday denounced "fake news".
Preparatory mission
The meeting of the Security Council, partially broadcast on television, was the occasion for a rather tasty scene, when Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the external security services (SVR), drew a parallel between the decision to be taken on the DNR/LNR and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“It is not a question of their sovereignty, but of recognizing their independence”
, replied Vladimir Putin to the powerful head of the
“services”
, clearly disconcerted.
For Vladimir Putin, loosening the grip of some 150,000 Russian soldiers positioned around Ukraine and allowing the relaunch of a new diplomatic cycle is therefore no longer of interest, since he has not obtained guarantees on his demands. security issues, first and foremost on the non-enlargement of NATO towards the East.
This umpteenth preparatory mission on this subject remains, however, still officially entrusted to the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, who is in principle to meet Thursday in Geneva with the American Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken.
And, stressed Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, if the two presidents, American and Russian, consider it
“useful”
, they can always
“talk to each other on the telephone or in another way”
…