“There are four new regions of Russia,” Vladimir Putin intoned today. That may only be true for the moment, and perhaps only in Putin’s mind. As expected, Putin signed a decree formally annexing four slices of Ukraine to Russia, setting the stage for a claim of defending the country against invaders who, er, just want their own country back:

He says the people of the four Ukrainian regions he’s planning to annex have made their decision. “The results are known, well known,” he says. The referendums were condemned as illegal by the West and legal experts.

“I’m sure that the Federal Assembly will support the four new subjects of Russian Federation… because this is the will of millions of people,” Putin says to huge applause.

He goes on to say the results are the “natural right” of those who voted.

Putin’s concern for “natural rights” sounds so sincere … after his troops have killed thousands of Ukrainian citizens, tortured even more, and seized their lands. What happened to their natural rights?

In fact, they may be on the precipice of seizing those “natural rights” back from Putin. Pro-Russian officials in Lyman, a key communications hub for Russian control of the newly annexed slices of Ukraine, warn that Ukrainian forces have pretty much surrounded the Russians and are about to annihilate them:

“The news from Lyman is disturbing. At the moment, Lyman is partially surrounded,” said Denis Pushilin, the pro-Moscow leader in the breakaway region of Donetsk, on social media.

Two nearby villages were “not fully under our control,” he added.

Moscow’s forces took weeks to take control of Lyman in the spring.

Its possible imminent recapture by the Ukrainian army comes as Russia prepares to formally annex four occupied regions in a grand Kremlin ceremony later on Friday.

Lyman lies in the north of Donetsk, which Moscow says it will annex despite only controlling part of the region.

ISW confirms that Ukraine has more than just partially surrounded Lyman. According to intercepts and open-source communications, Ukrainian forces have encircled the city and have already cut off its ground line of communications that support Russian forces in other parts of the Donbas. This looks like a replay of the military strategy that liberated most of the Kharkiv Oblast and sent Russians off in a rout:

Russian sources indicated that Ukrainian troops have likely completed the envelopment of the Russian grouping in the Lyman area as of the end of the day on September 29. A prominent Russian military correspondent reported that Ukrainian forces broke through Russian defenses around Stavky, 10km north of Lyman, and cut the Torske-Drobysheve road that is the last supply and egress route for Russian elements holding the line west of Lyman.[14] The correspondent called the situation “extremely difficult” for elements of the BARS-13 detachment and the 752nd Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 20th Combined Arms Army, which are reportedly defending around Drobysheve and into Lyman.[15]

Another Russian milblogger stated that Ukrainian troops are attacking Lyman from three directions and have cut Russian access to the critical Svatove-Lyman road, which is the major ground line of communication (GLOC) sustaining the Russian grouping within Lyman itself.[16] Several milbloggers stated that the fall of Lyman to Ukrainian troops is imminent without the immediate reinforcement of Russian forces.[17] The Ukrainian General Staff reported earlier in the day on September 29 that seven tank units formed by newly mobilized and low-skilled personnel deployed to the Lyman area without proper fire training for tank weapons and got into a road accident.[18] It is highly unlikely that any deployment of additional, newly mobilized, forces to Lyman will afford the existing Russian grouping significant defensive capabilities and prevent Ukrainian troops from collapsing the Lyman pocket.

In other words, Ukraine can now either force the surrender of Russians in Lyman or annihilate them. Thus far the Ukrainians have been amenable to POWs, but one has to wonder how long that will last after previous liberations exposed massive war crimes on the part of Russian troops. The Russians in Lyman may not want to roll the dice on surrender, but then again, they have to know now that Putin’s not going to be able to relieve them either.

The Daily Beast calls this potentially the most humiliating defeat for Putin yet, if Ukrainians succeed:

Moscow planned to celebrated the annexation of huge swathes of Eastern Ukraine Friday but Putin’s party was wrecked by a lightning counter-attack that may have trapped thousands of his men in a key city supposedly now part of Russia.

Ukrainian sources claimed that the strategic city of Lyman, which has served as a Russian military hub in Donetsk, has been encircled and supply lines cut. “Lyman! The operation to encircle the Russian group is at the stage of completion,” said Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko on Friday. The claim could not be independently verified but, if confirmed, it would be one of the most serious Russian military losses of the war so far.

Pro-Kremlin forces have conceded that the Ukrainians have made major gains in the region and are close to cutting off the Russian staging post in northern Donetsk, which has been under Russian control since July.

Ukraine said earlier in the week they had made deep gains in the stronghold and were close to taking back the territory—despite the Russian president’s claims that the region now belonged to an enlarged Russia.

In one sense, Putin may hope to use that to fire up the Russian people for a renewed commitment to the war. That’s clearly the aim of the annexation effort — that, and unlocking legal conditions in Russia that allow for a total-war footing. The problem with that strategy is the Russian people, who have made it clear that they have no stomach for Putin’s Operation Slavicide. Their footing has been on the roads leading out of Russia.

Plus, Putin simply doesn’t have the resources to properly arm and train a larger military. It has become clear that Putin couldn’t put together a proper military before the war started, and now he’s playing catch-up with nothing left in reserves. Russian men know this as well, which is part of the reason why they’re resisting even the partial mobilization Putin imposed.

However, the immediate loss of the annexed territories creates another unpleasant effect for Putin. He becomes the first Russian leader to lose Russian territory through war since Stalin, and permanently lose it since Czar Nicholas II. How long will the oligarchs allow this to continue and escalate before they decide to apply the Romanov solution themselves and look to escape the catastrophe? If Lyman falls and Russian forces end up trapped in the Donbas and around Kherson, it might not be too much longer after that.