The Ukrainians’ assault on Lyman, a rail hub leading into the mineral-rich Donbas region, underscored their resolve to attack in territory Mr. Putin now claims sovereignty over — raising the stakes in a war in which a nuclear-armed Russia has declared it would use “all available means” to defend land it considers its own.It was a striking display of internal dissent after Mr. Putin made a show of force in Moscow on Friday, delivering a menacing speech in which he announced the annexation of the swaths of Ukrainian territory, and positioned the war as an existential battle between Russia and Western elites.The State of the War - Annexation Push: After Moscow’s proxies conducted a series of sham referendums in the Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk, President Vladimir V. Putin declared the four territories to be part of Russia.For Russia, the setback came less than 24 hours after Mr. Putin’s speech on Friday — his most harrowing of the war — in which he decried the United States for “Satanism” and the West as “the enemy,” “deceitful and hypocritical through and through.” The West, he said, had “no moral right” to condemn the annexation of parts of Ukraine, given its own history of brutal colonization, dividing the world “into their vassals — the so-called civilized countries — and everyone else.” The residents of the four Ukrainian regions — which are still partly controlled by Ukrainian forces — would become Russia’s citizens “forever,” said Mr. Putin, adding that Russia would defend them “with all the forces and means at our disposal.” And he again raised the specter of using nuclear weapons, noting in a cryptic aside that the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan in 1945 had “created a precedent.” Ukrainian officials have consistently said they will disregard Russia’s territorial claims and press ahead with counteroffensives in eastern Ukraine and around the southern port city of Kherson.Live Updates: Russia-Ukraine War Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that Russia’s top military brass had “covered for” an “incompetent” general who should now be “sent to the front to wash his shame off with blood.” Mr. Kadyrov said he had told Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the head of the Russian General Staff, that the forces on the Lyman front had been left without sufficient communications and ammunition supplies."