KHARKIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized two Ukrainian breakaway republics as independent, a move certain to further inflame animosities with the West and escalate fears of an invasion that could ignite fighting reminiscent of World War II and redraw the map of Eastern Europe.
Putin had earlier informed French President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany in a phone call of his decision to sign a decree recognizing the independence of the two pro-Russia republics, which comprise the part of eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas region. A Kremlin readout of those calls said the two Western leaders were disappointed but “expressed their readiness to continue contacts.”
In a long address to his nation from his office, Putin — leaning back in his chair behind a wooden desk equipped with a bank of telephones and a computer — gave a historic excursion examining in detail Ukraine’s origins and its territorial evolution across history, building a case that he has long pushed for: that “Ukraine was never a true nation.”
