He referred to “the ruling circles of the so-called West” as “the enemy,” a word he rarely uses in reference to the West - and struck a tone of spiteful anger and defiance. Putin’s increasingly antagonistic standards, the speech was extraordinary, a combination of bluster and menace that mixed conspiratorial riffs against the American-led “neocolonial system” with an appeal to the world to see Russia as the leader of an uprising against American power. Even as the Russian leader spoke, officials said the Ukrainian army had moved closer to encircling the Russian-occupied town of Lyman, a strategically important hub in the Donetsk region that lies inside the territory Mr. Putin’s address came against a backdrop of Russian embarrassments on the battlefield, where Ukraine’s forces have scored stunning victories in recent weeks in the east. 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 regions to start the official annexation process, before clasping hands with them and chanting “Russia! Russia!” Speaking to hundreds of Russian lawmakers and governors in a grand Kremlin hall, Mr. Putin on Friday asserted that Russia would take control of four Ukrainian regions and decried the United States for “Satanism” in a speech that marked an escalation in Moscow’s war against Ukraine and positioned Russia, in starkly confrontational terms, as fighting an existential battle with Western elites he deemed “the enemy.” Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow on Friday.
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