• Vladimir Putin awards state prizes to the governors of annexed territories.
• Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhya, and Kherson are featured.
• Margarita Simonyan also receives Putin’s highest distinction.

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has given state prizes to the Kremlin-installed governors of four seized territories in southern and eastern Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed in September.

The highest state honor of the Russian Federation was given to Denis Pushilin, Leonid Pasechnik, Yevgeny Balitsky, Vladimir Saldo, and the leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, at a ceremony held in the Kremlin.

“Thank you for wasting the cannibals,” she said to Putin during her acceptance speech.

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