Putin's speech today. Worth a read. He pretty much declared war on the West.

Link to tweet

Medium thread.

From the NY Times:

Speaking to hundreds of Russian lawmakers and governors in a grand Kremlin hall, Mr. Putin said that the residents of the four regions — which are still partially controlled by Ukrainian forces — would become Russia’s citizens “forever.” He then held a signing ceremony with the Russian-installed heads of those four regions to start the official annexation process, before clasping hands with them and chanting “Russia! Russia!”

Even by Mr. Putin’s increasingly confrontational standards, it was an extraordinary speech, mixing riffs against Western attitudes on gender identity with an appeal to the world to see Russia as the leader of an uprising against American power.

“Not only do Western elites deny national sovereignty and international law,” he said in the 37-minute address. “Their hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid.

A few excerpts from Reuters:

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/extracts-from-putin-s-speech-at-annexation-ceremony/47943676