Kremlin says annexation and retreat are not a contradiction amid Ukrainian successes | Reuters

Vatniks stay losing.

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/xw8wug/kremlin_says_annexation_and_retreat_are_not_a/

https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/xw8cw9/kremlin_says_annexation_and_retreat_are_not_a/

https://old.reddit.com/r/NewsOfTheStupid/comments/xw8e05/kremlin_says_annexation_and_retreat_are_not_a/

Kremlin says annexation and retreat are not a contradiction amid Ukrainian successes

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a concert marking the declared annexation of the Russian-controlled territories of four Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, after holding what Russian authorities called referendums in the occupied areas of Ukraine that were condemned by Kyiv and governments worldwide, in Red Square in central Moscow, Russia, September 30, 2022.

They will be with Russia forever and they will be returned."

The contrast between a set of defeats on the battlefield and lofty language from the Kremlin about Russia's might have raised concerns within the Russian elite about the conduct of the war.

Together with Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, Putin's total claim amounts to more than 22% of Ukrainian territory, though the exact borders of the four regions he is annexing are still yet to be finally clarified.

Moscow, which recognised Ukraine's post-Soviet borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, will never give the regions back, Putin said on Friday at a grand Kremlin treaty-signing ceremony which brought the partially controlled regions into Russia.

Kyiv denies Russian speakers were persecuted.