The White House will “never” recognize any territory Russia annexes from Ukraine as legitimate parts of Russia, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday following announcements that referendums in Russian-occupied territories could take place as early as this week.
Sullivan’s comments come shortly after Russian-backed leaders in the self-identified Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic announced a referendum on joining Russia. The referendums were announced in the aftermath of Ukraine’s most successful counterassault since the war began.
“Let me be clear, if this does transpire, and obviously it’s not a done deal yet, but if this does transpire, the United States will never recognize Russia’s claims to any purported annexed parts of Ukraine, and we will never recognize this territory as anything other than a part of Ukraine,” he said during Tuesday’s press briefing at the White House. “We reject Russia’s actions unequivocally.”
It’s unclear how the referendums will be held considering Russian-backed forces control slightly more than half of the Donetsk region and Ukrainian forces are trying to take Luhansk, according to Reuters.
Sullivan, as many other Biden administration officials have, referred to any referendum that occurs in Russian-occupied Ukraine as a “sham,” explaining, “As we’ve been warning for months, Russia appears to be proceeding with plans to hold sham referendums in areas of Ukraine under its control and even in areas of Ukraine not currently under its control in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”
Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the spokesman for the Pentagon, told reporters on Tuesday that the referendum, in his view, “is simply an information operation that’s meant to distract from the difficult state that the Russian military currently finds itself in right now.”
He also said the U.S. wouldn’t recognize the outcome of any referendum in Russia-occupied Ukraine.
Sullivan also addressed the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin could mobilize the reserve forces to join the war.
“We are aware of reports that President Putin may be preparing to enact mobilization measures. Like its sham annexation planning, this is reflective of Russia’s struggles in Ukraine,” he said. “He may be resorting to partial mobilization forcing even more Russians to go fight his brutal war in Ukraine in part because they simply need more personnel and manpower given the success Ukraine has had on the battlefield, particularly in the northeast.”
