FOG BLOG UKRAINE LOG: PUTIN TO SIGN DECREE ANNEXING UKRAINE REGIONS, MANY NATIONS OPPOSE DECREE!

U.S., CANADA, UN Denounce Russia's Planned Annexation Ceremony Just Days After 'Sham' Referendums The United States and the United Nations have strongly denounced Russia's plans to hold an annexation ceremony on September 30 following referendums in four Ukrainian regions that Western countries said were a "sham" but that Moscow-installed officials in the regions said showed overwhelmingly support for joining Russia.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States "does not, and will never, recognize the legitimacy or outcome of these sham referenda or Russia's purported annexation of Ukrainian territory," while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said annexation would mark a "dangerous escalation" that would jeopardize the prospects for peace. Blnken said the referendums were "a futile effort to mask what amounts to a further attempt at a land grab in Ukraine," adding in a statement that the results "were orchestrated in Moscow and do not reflect the will of the people of Ukraine." He said Russia forced much of the population of areas it has seized to flee and then compelled the Ukrainian citizens who remained "to cast ballots at gunpoint, in fear for their safety, and the safety of their loved ones." Guterres said any decision to proceed with the annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya regions of Ukraine "would have no legal value and deserves to be condemned." The annexations "will prolong the dramatic impacts on the global economy, especially in developing countries, and hinder our ability to deliver life-saving aid across Ukraine and beyond," Guterres said. The Kremlin announced earlier it will move to seize the territories through the signing of documents on "the accession of new territories into the Russian Federation."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on September 29 that a signing ceremony involving President Vladimir Putin and Moscow-imposed leaders from the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya would take place at 3 p.m. Moscow time "on agreements on the accession of new territories into the Russian Federation."

Putin will sign accession documents in an ornate Kremlin hall and deliver a speech, Peskov said. A pop concert will be held on Red Square, where a stage with giant video screens has been set up and where billboards proclaim "Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, Kherson -- Russia!"