Zelenskyy calls for emergency meeting as Russia gets ready to annex four regions of Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend a ceremony on Friday in the Kremlin when four regions of Ukraine will be officially folded into Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Russia on Friday will formally annex occupied parts of Ukraine where it held Kremlin-orchestrated “referendums” in which it claimed that residents had voted overwhelmingly to live under Moscow’s rule.

The Ukrainian government and the West have denounced the ballots as illegal, forced and rigged.