Shortly after holding sham referendums in parts of occupied Ukranian, President Putin declared four new regions of the country.
According to a translation, Putin said there were four new regions of Russia.
Putin said the results were known, referring to the votes that the Ukrainian and Western governments say broke international law. The results were due to the will of millions of people according to him.
There are two pro-Russian "republics" in Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, as well as in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. It is thought to make up 18% of the land in the country.
Most people voted to join Russia despite the fact that the votes were illegitimate.
The West is looking for new opportunities to hit us and they always dreamed about breaking our state into smaller states who will be fighting against each other, according to Putin.
He said that they couldn't be happy with the idea that there is a large country with all the natural resources.
At least 23 people were killed when a Russian strike hit a convoy in the south of the country.
The city's governor said that the people in the convoy were going to pick up their relatives in Russian-occupied territory. Russia said the attack was carried out by Ukraine.
The referendums were carried out under the barrel of a gun, and the international community should immediately ramp up sanctions against Russia in order to deter it from annexing more territory as it did in the case of the peninsula.
After the so-called votes, Kyiv said it will not negotiate with the Kremlin and will not stop fighting until it has regained all of the land it lost to Russia.
Moscow has said it has the right to use nuclear weapons to defend its territory and citizens if it feels there is a threat.
Concerns have been raised that it could use nuclear weapons againstUkraine now that more regions are annexed and Moscow can claim them as their own. The threat of such an attack is real according to one Ukrainian defense ministry official.
The UN Secretary-General said that the referendums would have no legal value and deserved to be condemned.
It's against everything the international community is supposed to stand for. It is against the purpose and principles of the UN. It is a big deal. It isn't a part of the modern world. It can't be accepted.
It is thought that Moscow is going to prolong the war and make it more difficult to reach a peaceful resolution.
Changes to Russia's constitution made in 2020 means that it is not possible for Russia to give away any of its territory to a foreign power.
The signs show that Putin decided to up the ante in the war by ramping up the nuclear rhetoric and ordering 300,000 reserve soldiers to be sent to fight in Ukraine with little or no training.
There are already concerns that the U.S. and Europe are running out of support if the war continues for a long time.
Western citizens are feeling the effects of the war in the form of higher energy and food prices, and could begin to pressure their governments to rebuild relations with Moscow to ease these pressures.
Ian Bremmer said in a speech Wednesday that Putin has opened a conflict that is shifting international politics, roiling the global economy, and remaking relations between East and West.
The effects of this conflict have upended lives and livelihoods in every region of the world.
The report was contributed to by CNBC'sNatasha Turak.
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