Russia Will Consider Attacks on Annexed Territory As Attacks on Russia

Vladimir Putin signed an agreement this morning to annex almost a fifth of Ukraine, an area that includes territory from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

The news comes after Russia has established a series of "referendums" in the region, quite questionable, which of course demonstrated the intention of the majority of the population to join the Russian territory.

In addition to Russia now considering these territories as annexed, they have also called for a further escalation of the conflict. This is because they announced that any kind of attacks against the annexed territory would be considered as an attack on Russia itself. Russian leaders also affirmed that the rest of the annexed territory that Russia does not control (such as the Donetsk region, which they control 60%) will be “liberated”.

This puts Ukraine's international allies in a precarious situation. Especially since Putin has claimed that Rusia would be willing to defend the "territorial integrity" of Russia through the use of nuclear weapons.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the act, "Any decision to proceed…would have no legal value and deserves to be condemned. It cannot be reconciled with the international legal framework; it opposes everything that the international community must defend; it mocks the purposes and principles of the United Nations," he said.