The recognition by Moscow of staged referendums on joining Russia that were held in four illegally occupied regions of Ukraine, though dismissed by Kyiv and denounced by Washington as fraudulent, will likely intensify Ukraine’s drive to retake its territory with the aid of Western-supplied weapons even as Russia makes new nuclear threats. 

Those votes, which took place against a backdrop of continuous fighting and almost certainly were rigged, were held in Donetsk and Luhansk as well as at Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Most analysts agree the Kremlin will soon attempt to annex portions of eastern Ukraine — while also casting Kyiv’s counter-offensives as existential threats. 

While Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said “the turnout in the referendums exceeded even the wildest forecasts,” the world was somewhat less jovial. America’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said via Twitter that the United States will be putting forward a Security Council resolution to “condemn Russia’s sham ‘referenda’ and “call on Member States not to recognize any altered status of Ukraine.” She indicated the resolution will also “obligate Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine,” but there is no indication that the Kremlin would heed such a call. 

To the contrary, while the staged votes only serve to undermine Moscow’s already baseless claims for a land grab in Ukraine, they also underscore to what extent President Putin is digging in, as an ongoing “partial mobilization” of Russian conscripts opens a path to more troops entering the occupied areas. 

The American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, appeared to recognize the impact of the rapidly evolving situation. Speaking at a press conference in India on Tuesday, Mr. Blinken said Ukraine “has the absolute right to defend itself throughout its territory, including to take back the territory that has been illegally seized in one way or another by Russia.”

With respect to Russia’s announcements about the referendums, Mr. Blinken said “the Ukrainians will continue to do what they need to do to get back the land that has been taken from them,” adding that Washington “will continue to support” Ukraine’s armed forces in that effort.  

On Tuesday the AP reported that the Pentagon will deliver the first two of eight advanced NASAMS anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine in the next two months, and a new $1.1 billion arms and ammunition package for the embattled country is already in the works. Reuters reported that the U.S. has spent more than $15 billion on military aid to Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24.

According to Ukrinform, Mr. Blinken also said that America would never recognize the annexation of Ukrainian territories should the Kremlin announce the move, and evoked “severe and swift costs” to be imposed on Moscow should it elect to do so, without specifying what those costs might be. 

The bleak and widening path to an attempted Russian annexation of broad swaths of Ukraine is accompanied by more escalatory rhetoric from Moscow. Over the weekend Mr. Blinken told CBS: “We’ve been very clear with the Russians publicly and as well as privately to stop the loose talk about nuclear weapons.” It is not clear whether everyone in the Kremlin has gotten that memo. 

In a post on Telegram subsequent to Mr. Blinken’s remarks, the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, Dmitry Medvedev, said, “I have to remind you again — for those deaf ears who hear only themselves, Russia has the right to use nuclear weapons if necessary.” Mr. Medvedev qualified that warning by saying Russia would only do so “in predetermined cases” and if “the threat to Russia exceeds the established danger limit.”

As unsettling as Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling may be, the likelihood of Moscow using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine is not seen as high. And while Mr. Blinken did not specify what the consequences might be should Mr. Putin use them in response to some eventual perceived or otherwise invented threat, the West would likely respond proportionately, with targeted counterstrikes against specified Russian military assets. 

War is anything but predictable, though, as the Nord Stream gas pipeline crisis shows. Russia is widely suspected of having sabotaged its own pipelines under the Baltic Sea, which according to the Telegraph would be “a page ripped straight from Vladimir Putin’s playbook of panic, escalation and misdirection.” 

The illegal referenda, and the sham results trumpeted all over Russian media on Wednesday, spring from the same dangerous playbook.