Russia president Putin says four annexed Ukrainian regions are 'Russian forever'.
T=1765859734/Human Date and time (GMT): Tue, 16th Dec. 2025, 04.35.
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Read President Putin's speech on "regional unification" word for word
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech in the Kremlin on Friday, at the end of which he signed agreements on the "annexation" of four Ukrainian regions, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, as part of Russia.
The translation was made from the original text shared by Russian authorities, not directly from Putin's speech.
Dear citizens of Russia, citizens of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, residents of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, members of the State Duma, senators of the Russian Federation!
As you know, referendums were held in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, as well as in the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. Their results have been counted, the results are known. The people have made their choice, their unequivocal choice.
Today we are signing agreements on the accession of the Donetsk People's Republic, the Luhansk People's Republic, the Zaporizhia region and the Kherson region to Russia. I am sure that the Federal Assembly will support the constitutional laws on the recognition and formation of four new regions, four new subjects of the Russian Federation, into Russia, because this is the will of millions of people.
(Applause.)
This is, of course, their right, their inalienable right, enshrined in the first article of the Charter of the United Nations, which expressly affirms the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.
I repeat: this is the inalienable right of citizens, it is based on the historical unity in the name of which generations of our ancestors have won, those who have built and defended Russia from the roots of Ancient Rus for centuries. In these territories, in Novorossiya, Rumyantsev, Suvorov and Ushakov fought, new cities were founded there by Catherine the Great and Potemkin. There, our grandfathers and great-grandfathers gave their lives in the Great Patriotic War.
We will always remember the heroes of the “Russian Spring”, those who did not submit to the neo-Nazi coup in Ukraine in 2014, all those who died defending the right to speak their native language, to preserve their culture, traditions and faith, the right to live. They are the warriors of Donbas, the martyrs of the “Odessa Hatyn”, the victims of the brutal terrorist attacks organized by the Kiev regime. They are volunteers and soldiers, they are civilians, children, women, the elderly, Russians, Ukrainians and people of different nationalities. They include the true people's leader of Donetsk, Alexander Zakharchenko, military commanders Arsen Pavlov and Vladimir Zhoga, Olga Kochura and Alexei Mozgovoi, the prosecutor of the Luhansk Republic, Sergei Gorenko. They include paratrooper Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov, and all our soldiers and officers who died in a special military operation. They are heroes. (Applause.) Heroes of Great Russia. I ask you to honor their memory by observing a moment of silence.
(A moment of silence.)
Thanks.
The choice of millions of residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, as well as the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, is based on our common destiny and our thousand-year history. This spiritual connection has been passed on to our children and grandchildren by our people. Despite all the trials, they have preserved their love for Russia for many years. And no one can destroy that feeling in us. That is why both the older generations and the young people who were born after the tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union voted for our unity and our common future.
In 1991, representatives of the then party elite made a decision in the Białowieża Forest to dissolve the Soviet Union without consulting the will of ordinary citizens, and people were torn away from their homeland in an instant. It shattered and mutilated our national community and began a national catastrophe. Just as once, after the revolution, the borders of the Soviet republics were secretly agreed upon, so the last leaders of the Soviet Union, against the will of the majority of the people, in the 1991 referendum, crushed our great country and presented the people with only a fact.
I suppose they didn't even fully understand what they were doing and what consequences it would inevitably lead to in the end. But it doesn't matter anymore. The Soviet Union doesn't exist, the past cannot be returned. And Russia doesn't even need it anymore, we don't strive for it. But there is nothing more powerful than the determination of millions of people who, because of their culture, faith, traditions and language, consider themselves part of Russia and whose ancestors have lived for centuries in a unified state. There is nothing more powerful than the determination of these people to return to their true, historical homeland.
For eight long years, the people of Donbas have been subjected to genocide, shelling and blockade, and in Kherson and Zaporizhia, criminal attempts have been made to incite hatred against Russia and everything Russian. Already during the referendums, the Kiev regime threatened school teachers and women working in election commissions with reprisals and death, and intimidated millions of people who came to express their will. But the unyielding people of Donbas, Zaporizhia and Kherson have spoken.
I want those in power in Kiev and their real masters in the West to hear me and for everyone to remember this: the people living in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia will become our citizens forever.
(Applause.)
We call on the Kiev regime to immediately begin a ceasefire, to stop all hostilities, the war that it started back in 2014, and to return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this, we have said this many times. But we are not discussing the choice of the people of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, it has been made, and Russia will not betray it. (Applause.) The current rulers in Kiev must respect this free expression of the people's will, that is the only way to behave. That is the only way to achieve peace.
We will defend our country with all our might and means and do everything we can to ensure the safety of our citizens. It is the great liberation mission of our people.
We will definitely rebuild destroyed cities and villages, housing, schools, hospitals, theaters and museums, renovate and develop industrial enterprises, factories, infrastructure, as well as social security, pension, healthcare and education systems.
Of course, we are working to improve the level of security. We will work together so that the citizens of the new regions feel that they have the support of the entire Russian people, the entire country, all republics, all regions and areas of our vast Motherland.
(Applause.)
Dear friends, colleagues!
Today I would like to address my words to the soldiers and officers participating in the special military operation, to the soldiers of Donbass and Novorossiya, to those who, in accordance with the decree on partial mobilization, join the Armed Forces, fulfilling their patriotic duty, and to those who voluntarily come to the military recruitment offices at the call of their hearts. I would also like to turn to their parents, wives and children to tell them what our people are fighting for, what kind of enemy we are facing, an enemy who is dragging the world into new wars and crises and is reaping the bloodstained benefits of this tragedy.
Our compatriots, our brothers and sisters in Ukraine – an original part of our united nation – have seen with their own eyes what the ruling circles of the so-called West are preparing for all of humanity. They have dropped their masks and revealed their true selves.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West decided that the world, all of us, would have to submit to its dictates forever. In 1991, the West thought that Russia would never recover from such shocks and would collapse on its own. This almost happened – we remember the 90s, the terrible 90s, the hungry, cold and hopeless years. But Russia endured, was reborn, became stronger and once again took its rightful place in the world.
At the same time, the West has been and continues to be looking for a new opportunity to strike at us, to weaken and disintegrate Russia, as it has always dreamed of, to break up our state, to incite peoples against each other and condemn them to poverty and destruction. They simply cannot accept that there is such a large and huge country in the world, with its own territories, natural resources and resources, and whose people cannot and will never live under foreign rule.
The West is ready to go beyond all limits to preserve the neocolonial system that allows it to parasitize and plunder the world thanks to the power of the dollar and technology, to collect a real tax from humanity, to collect the main source of undeserved wealth, the interest on hegemony. The preservation of this payment is the central, genuine and completely selfish motive of the Western countries. For this reason, the complete crushing of the sovereignty of peoples is in their interests. For this reason, they attack independent states, traditional values and original cultures and seek to destabilize international processes and integration processes, as well as new world currencies and centers of technological development that they cannot control. It is crucial for them that all countries cede their sovereignty to the United States.
The leaders of some states agree to this voluntarily, voluntarily agree to become vassals; others are bribed or intimidated. If this does not succeed, they destroy entire states and leave behind humanitarian disasters, distress, ruins, millions of lost and ruined human destinies, terrorist areas, socially disadvantaged areas, protectorates, colonies and semi-colonies. They do not care, as long as they get their own benefit.
I want to emphasize once again that greed and the preservation of unlimited power are the real reasons for the hybrid war that the “collective West” is waging against Russia. They do not want us to be free, they want us to be a colony. They do not want equal cooperation, but robbery. They do not want us to be a free society, but a bunch of soulless slaves.
For them, our thought and philosophy are an immediate threat, which is why they are trying to assassinate our philosophers. Our culture and art are a threat to them, so they are trying to ban them. Our development and prosperity are also dangerous to them, because competition is increasing. They don't need Russia, we need it.
(Applause.)
I would like to remind you that the pursuit of world domination has always been tempered by the courage and strength of our people. Russia is always Russia. We will continue to protect our values and our homeland.
The West relies on impunity, on being ignored. In fact, everything has been ignored so far. Strategic security agreements are being thrown into the trash, agreements made at the highest political level are being declared false, firm promises not to expand NATO to the East have turned into dirty fraud as soon as our former leaders believed them; agreements on missile defense and medium- and short-range missiles have been unilaterally terminated on fabricated grounds.
We just hear from everywhere that the West is defending a rules-based order. Where did those rules come from? Has anyone ever seen them? Who agreed on them? It's just nonsense, a complete fraud, a double or even triple morality! They think we're fools.
Russia is a mighty, millennial superpower, a civilized state, and it is not going to live by such fake rules.
(Applause.)
It is the so-called West that has trampled on the principle of the inviolability of borders and now decides at its own discretion who has the right to self-determination, who does not, and who is not worthy of it. It is unclear why they make such decisions, who has given them such a right. They themselves.
That is why they are furious about the choice of the people of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson. The West has no moral right to condemn or even talk about democratic freedom. It does not exist and never has!
The Western elite not only denies national self-determination and international law. Their hegemony is marked by totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid. They brazenly divide the world into their vassals, the so-called civilized countries, and all the others, which, according to Western racists, belong to the group of barbarians and savages. The false labels – “rogue state”, “authoritarian regime” – are already ready. They are attached to entire peoples and states, and there is nothing new in that. There is nothing new in that: the Western elite has remained as it has always been, colonialist. They discriminate and divide peoples into the first class and other classes.
We have never accepted and will never accept such political nationalism and racism. And what else but racism is the Russophobia that is now spreading around the world? What else but racism is the West's unwavering conviction that Western civilization, neoliberal culture, is an unsurpassed model for the whole world? “He who is not with us is against us.” It even sounds strange.
The Western elite even transfers remorse for their own historical crimes to everyone else and demands that their citizens and other nations take responsibility for things they have nothing to do with – for example, the times of colonial conquest.
It is worth reminding the West that it began its own colonial policy in the Middle Ages, which was followed by the global slave trade, the genocide of Native American tribes in America, the plunder of India and Africa, and the wars of England and France against China, which forced it to open its ports to the opium trade. They hooked entire nations on drugs, deliberately destroyed entire ethnic groups for land and resources, and hunted people like animals. It is against human nature, truth, freedom, and justice.
But we are proud that in the 20th century, our country led the anti-colonial movement that gave many peoples of the world the opportunity to develop, reduce poverty and inequality, and overcome hunger and disease.
I emphasize that one of the reasons for the centuries-old Russophobia, the undisguised hatred of Russia by these Western elites, is precisely the fact that we did not allow ourselves to be robbed during the colonial conquests, but forced Europeans to trade in the name of mutual benefit. This was achieved by creating a strong centralized state from Russia, which developed and strengthened on the great moral values of Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, as well as on the Russian culture and language open to everyone.
It is known that there have been many planned interventions in Russian affairs; attempts were made to exploit the period of chaos at the beginning of the 17th century and the period of upheaval after 1917 – without success. However, the West managed to reach Russia’s riches at the end of the 20th century, when the state was destroyed. At that time, we were called friends and partners, but in fact we were treated as a colony – trillions of dollars were pumped out of the country through various arrangements. We remember everything, we have forgotten nothing.
And now people in Donetsk and Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia have asked for the restoration of our historical connection. Thank you!
(Applause.)
For centuries, Western countries have said they are bringing freedom and democracy to other nations. The opposite is true: instead of democracy, there is oppression and exploitation, instead of freedom, slavery and violence. The entire unipolar world order is inherently anti-democratic and unfree, it is false and hypocritical.
The United States is the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons twice, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby setting a precedent.
I remind you that during World War II, the United States, together with the British, reduced Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities to rubble without any military need. And it was done for show, without any military need. The only goal was to intimidate our country and the whole world, just like in the case of the nuclear bombings of Japan.
The United States left a terrible mark on the memories of the people of Korea and Vietnam with barbaric carpet bombings, the use of napalm, and chemical weapons.
The United States continues to de facto occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, cynically calling them equal allies. What kind of alliance is this? The whole world knows that the leaders of these countries are being monitored, that listening devices are being installed in the official residences and even the living rooms of the highest officials of these states. Truly shameful. It is shameful for those who do it and for those who, like slaves, silently and humbly swallow this impudence.
They call orders and rude, insulting cries directed at their vassals Euro-Atlantic solidarity and the development of biological weapons, experiments on living people, including in Ukraine, noble medical research.
With their destructive policies, wars and plunder, they have caused the current huge migration flows. Millions of people suffer from deprivation and torment, and thousands die in their quest for Europe.
Now grain is being exported from Ukraine. Where is it going under the pretext of “ensuring food supplies in the poorest countries of the world”? Where is it being exported? It all goes to European countries. Only five percent has gone to the poorest countries of the world. Once again, cheating and outright fraud.
The American elite is actually using the tragedy of these people to weaken their rivals and destroy nation states. This also applies to Europe, this also applies to the centuries-old identities of France, Italy, Spain and other countries.
Washington is demanding new sanctions against Russia, and most European politicians humbly agree. They clearly understand that the EU’s complete ban on Russian energy producers and other resources, pushed through by the United States, will lead to the decline of European industry and the complete capture of European markets – they understand this, these European elites understand everything, but they want to serve the interests of others. This is no longer humiliation, but outright betrayal of their peoples. But, my lord, it’s their business.
But sanctions alone were not enough for the Anglo-Saxons, they have moved on to destruction – unbelievable but true. They have organized explosions in the international Nord Stream gas pipelines that run along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. They have actually begun to destroy the pan-European energy infrastructure. It is obvious to everyone who benefits from this. The one who benefits has, of course, done it.
The US dictatorship is based on brute force, the law of the fist. It can be beautifully wrapped or without a wrapper, but the essence remains the same – the law of the fist. For this reason, hundreds of military bases have been deployed and maintained all over the world, NATO has expanded, and military alliances like AUKUS and others of the kind have been increasingly attempted to be built. Active work is also being done to create a military-political connection between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. All states that have genuine strategic sovereignty or aspire to it and are capable of challenging Western hegemony are automatically considered enemies.
It is precisely on these principles that the military doctrines of the United States and NATO are built, and they require – nothing more and nothing less than – complete domination. The Western elite hypocritically presents its neocolonial plans, even calling for peace, talking about some kind of restraint, and this ambiguous word appears from one strategy to another, but in reality it means only one thing – the weakening of any sovereign center of development.
We have already heard about the containment of Russia, China and Iran. I believe that the next in line are other countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, as well as the current partners and allies of the United States. We know that if they don’t like something, they will also impose sanctions on their own allies, sometimes one bank and sometimes another, sometimes one company and then another. This is a practice that is expanding. They have everyone in their sights, including our closest neighbors – the CIS countries.
However, this has clearly been wishful thinking on the part of the West for a long time. When they launched a blitzkrieg of sanctions against Russia, they believed once again that they could build the entire world under their command. But it turned out that such prospects do not excite everyone – except for exhausted political masochists and other admirers of unconventional international relations. Most states refuse to “put their hands in the sand” and choose the sensible path of cooperation with Russia.
The West clearly did not expect such defiance from them. They are just used to acting in a formulaic manner, taking everything by force, by cheating, bribing and intimidating, and they convince themselves that these methods will work forever, they are stuck in the past.
Such self-confidence is a direct consequence of the notorious concept of one’s own exclusivity and, moreover – this is of course very astonishing – also of the real “knowledge famine” of the West. The truth has been drowned in an ocean of myths, illusions and falsifications using infinitely aggressive propaganda, lying recklessly like Goebbels . The more incredible the lie, the faster it is believed – according to this principle they operate.
But you can't feed people with dollar and euro banknotes. You can't feed people with banknotes, and you can't heat your apartment with Western virtual social networks, bloated with capitalism. Everything I'm talking about is important. And what I just said is equally important: you can't feed people with paper - food is essential, and you can't heat people with bloated capitalism - energy is essential.
This is why European politicians must make their citizens eat less, bathe less often, and dress warmer at home. Those who start asking legitimate questions: “Why really?” are immediately declared enemies, extremists, and radicals. They point their accusing fingers at Russia and say: “That’s where all your problems are.” Lies again.
I would like to emphasize that there is reason to believe that the Western elite is not going to seek constructive solutions to the world food and energy crisis, which has arisen precisely because of them, as a result of their many years of policy, long before our special military operation in Ukraine, in Donbass. They have no intention of solving the problems of injustice and inequality. I am afraid that they are ready to use other, familiar recipes.
In this context, it is worth recalling that the West was born out of the conflicts of the early 20th century during the First World War. The victories of the Second World War enabled the United States to finally overcome the effects of the Great Depression, become the world's largest economy, and establish the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The crisis that threatened in the 1980s – and the situation escalated again in the 1980s – was largely overcome by the West by taking over the legacy and resources of the Soviet Union, which had finally collapsed. This is a fact.
To get out of this mess of contradictions, they must at all costs break Russia and other states that choose an independent path of development, so that they can continue to plunder other people's wealth and plug their gaps at the expense of others. If this does not happen, I do not exclude the possibility that they will try to bring the system to collapse in order to blame it for everything, or, God forbid, they will decide to use the well-known formula "war is the answer."
Russia understands its responsibility to the international community and is doing everything it can to bring it to its senses.
It is clear that the current neocolonial model is ultimately doomed. But I repeat, its real masters will cling to it until the end. They simply have nothing else to offer the world but to maintain the same system of plunder and extortion.
In fact, they care little about the natural right of billions of people, the majority of humanity, to freedom and justice, to the right to decide their own future. Now they have moved on to a radical denial of moral standards, religion, and family.
Let us answer our own very simple questions. I would now like to return to what I said, and I would like to address my words to all citizens of the country – not only to those colleagues who are in the hall, but to all citizens of Russia: do we want that here, in our homeland, in Russia, instead of mother and father, there is “parent number one”, “number two”, “number three” (have they gone completely crazy there!)? Do we want that in the lower grades of our schools, perversions are imposed on children that lead to degeneration and destruction? Do we want them to be told that there are other genders besides women and men and to be offered sex-reassignment surgeries? Is that what we want for our country and our children? We cannot accept this, we have another, our own future.
The dictatorship of the Western elite is directed at all societies, including the peoples of the Western countries themselves. This is a challenge for everyone. Such a complete rejection of man, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, the suppression of freedom has acquired the features of a “reverse religion” – outright Satanism. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ rebukes false prophets and says: “By their fruits you will know them.” And these poisonous fruits are already obvious to people – not only in our country, but in all countries, including many people in the West.
The world has entered an era of revolutionary changes, they are fundamental. New centers of development are being formed, they represent the majority of the world community – the majority! – and are not only ready to express their interests, but also to protect them, and they see in multipolarity an opportunity to strengthen their right to self-determination, which means finding true freedom, a historical perspective, the right to independent, creative and original development, a harmonious process.
There are many like-minded people all over the world, including in Europe and the United States, and we see their support. In many countries and societies, a liberation and anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is already developing. Its effectiveness is only growing. It is these forces that will determine the future geopolitical reality.
Dear friends!
Today we are fighting for a just and free future, first of all for ourselves, for Russia, and for dictatorship and despotism to be forever a thing of the past. I am convinced that countries and peoples understand that a policy based on the exclusive rights of anyone, the oppression of other cultures and peoples, is criminal, and that we must turn this shameful page. The destruction of Western hegemony has begun irreversibly. I repeat once again: the same thing will never happen again.
The battlefield to which fate and history have called us is the field on which we fight for our people, for a greater historical Russia.
(Applause.)
For the sake of a greater historical Russia, for future generations, for our children, grandchildren and their children. We must protect them from slavery, from terrible experiments aimed at crippling their consciousness and souls.
Today we are fighting so that no one will ever even think that Russia, our people, our language and our culture could be erased from history. Now we need to strengthen the entire society, and at the core of such unity can only be sovereignty, freedom, creativity and justice. Our values are humanity, mercy and compassion.
I would like to end my speech with the words of a true patriot , Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin : “If I consider Russia my homeland, it means that I love it, think and think in Russian, sing and speak in Russian, that I believe in the spiritual strength of the Russian people. Its spirit is my spirit; its fate is my fate; its suffering is my sorrow; its prosperity is my joy.”
Behind these words lies a great spiritual choice, which generations of our ancestors have followed for more than a thousand years. Now this choice is made by us, and it was made by the citizens of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, as well as the residents of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. They have decided to be with their people, to be with their homeland, to live its fate, to win with it.
We have the truth on our side, Russia is on our side!
(Applause.)
Translation: Delingua oy / Tiina Kokkonen, Miia Santalahti
SOURCE: (Paywall)
https://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000009106918.html
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https://www.youtube.com/live/8lCP7gUmAtU?si=Wo6Xo4cDQr6XP3Rr
30.9.2022
Vladimir Putin is set to approve the annexation of four Ukrainian regions into Russia, in a move that defies international law and has been Condemned across the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lCP7gUmAtU
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Russia to formally annex four occupied Ukrainian regions
President Putin will incorporate Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia into Russia at a ceremony in Moscow on Friday, the Kremlin says.
SOURCE:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/29/russia-to-formally-annex-four-occupied-ukrainian-regions
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