© Grigory Sysoyev/POOL/TASS

On Friday, September 30, St. George's Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace hosted a signing ceremony for the accession of four new territories to Russia – the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), the Zaporozhe and Kherson regions. The day before, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees recognizing the Zaporozhe and Kherson regions as independent territories. They came into force right away, and were published on the country’s official legal information portal.

"In compliance with the generally accepted principles and norms of international law, recognizing and reaffirming the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, and with regard to the will of people residing in the Zaporozhe region at the referendum of September 27, 2022, I hereby order to recognize the sovereignty and independence of the Zaporozhe region," the document says. A similar document was signed on the Kherson region’s state sovereignty.

The next day the Russian leader delivered a solemn speech before representatives of the Russian legislative and executive authorities, and then signed agreements to make the DPR, the LPR, the Zaporozhe and Kherson regions part of the Russian Federation. He was joined by heads of all the four new territories – Denis Pushilin, Leonid Pasechnik, Vladimir Rogov and Vladimir Saldo.

On October 4, the agreements will be considered by Russia’s Federation Council. And the upper house of parliament will approve of it, one must suppose.

Just a reminder: on September 23 to 27, residents of the liberated territories voted in referendums on joining the Russian Federation. The number of people aspiring to become part of our country is 99.23% for the DPR, 98.42% for the LPR, 93.11% for the Zaporozhe, and 87.05% for the Kherson region.

Back to the signing ceremony let’s recollect what President Vladimir Putin pointed out in his speech. First, he noted that the choice of people in Russia’s new territories is their inherent right enshrined in the UN Charter. “Kiev’s current authorities should respect this free expression of the people’s will; there is no other way. This is the only way to peace.”

Anyway, Russia is ready for negotiations with Ukraine and urges Kiev to give up on the hostilities and get back to the negotiating table. "We call on the Kiev regime to immediately cease fire and all hostilities; to end the war it unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table… I want the Kiev authorities and their true handlers in the West to hear me now, and I want everyone to remember this: the people living in Lugansk and Donetsk, in Kherson and Zaporozhe have become our citizens, forever!" the Russian leader stressed.

And then he said "we will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people. This is the great liberating mission of our nation."

Also, the head of state predictably touched upon the role of the West in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis. "Our compatriots, our brothers and sisters in Ukraine who are part of our united people have seen with their own eyes what the ruling class of the so-called West have prepared for humanity as a whole. They have dropped their masks and shown what they are really made of."

After that he dug into the Western countries’ planet-scale role: "The West is ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system which allows it to live off the world, to plunder it thanks to the domination of the dollar and technology…  It was the so-called West that trampled on the principle of the inviolability of borders, and now it is deciding, at its own discretion, who has the right to self-determination and who does not, who is unworthy of it. It is unclear what their decisions are based on or who gave them the right to decide in the first place."

Apart from Russia, the United States is now busy deterring other countries as well: "We have already heard about the deterrence of Russia, China and Iran. I believe next in line are other countries of Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, as well as current US partners and allies… They have everything in their sights, including our next-door neighbors – the CIS countries."

Promises by Western leaders not to expand NATO eastwards turned into a dirty deception, the Russian president stated. According to him, “the West is counting on impunity, on being able to get away with anything. As a matter of fact, this was actually the case until recently. Strategic security agreements have been trashed; agreements reached at the highest political level have been declared tall tales; firm promises not to expand NATO to the east gave way to dirty deception as soon as our former leaders bought into them; missile defense, intermediate-range and shorter-range missile treaties have been unilaterally dismantled under far-fetched pretexts." In the past, the West's "ambitions of world domination have repeatedly shattered against the courage and resilience of our people. Russia will always be Russia. We will continue to defend our values and our Motherland," the head of state went on to say.

According to him, “the West continued and continues looking for another chance to strike a blow at us, to weaken and break up Russia, which they have always dreamed about, to divide our state and set our peoples against each other, and to condemn them to poverty and extinction. They cannot rest easy knowing that there is such a great country with this huge territory in the world, with its natural wealth, resources and people who cannot and will not do someone else’s bidding."

To sum up, Vladimir Putin admitted that things have changed forever now: "I am convinced that countries and peoples understand that a policy based on the exceptionalism of whoever it may be and the suppression of other cultures and peoples is inherently criminal, and that we must close this shameful chapter. The ongoing collapse of Western hegemony is irreversible. And I repeat: things will never be the same… The battlefield to which destiny and history have called us is a battlefield for our people, for the great historical Russia… The truth is with us, and behind us is Russia!"