Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday unveiled a law establishing that September 30 will now be officially observed as “Reunification Day” with Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine annexed by the Kremlin a year ago.

Putin presented this initiative in the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian federal parliament) after Moscow organized the first elections in the respective regions in accordance with Russian law in early September, EFE and Agerpres write.

September 30, 2022 “went down in history” as the day four Ukrainian regions joined the Russian Federation, according to an explanatory note published on Thursday by Russian authorities on the government’s legal information portal.

According to the Kremlin, these four regions returned to Russia due to “the popular will of millions of people and their exercise of their inalienable right to determine their political status freely and without external interference.”

Putin signed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions in September 2022 in an attempt to create a land corridor with Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014, which Kyiv is now trying to retake in an offensive launched this summer.

Russia included four new territories in the Constitution, but after more than a year and a half of bloody fighting, it still does not fully control them.

“One country, one family, one Russia”

Groups close to the Kremlin have called for a major concert in Moscow’s Red Square on Friday to mark the anniversary of the annexation of four Ukrainian regions.

“One country, one family, one Russia” is the slogan of the concert, which some independent Russian media, such as Meduza.io, write is reminiscent of the slogan of the Nazi party “One nation, one empire, one ruler.”

Although the Kremlin has not yet confirmed that Putin will also take part in the event, who will probably address the audience with a message.

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