Washington: President Joe Biden condemned Russia’s claimed annexation of captured Ukrainian territory on Friday (US time), responding to Moscow’s latest escalation with a range of sanctions and a warning to President Vladimir Putin that the United States would defend “every single inch” of NATO territory from a potential attack.

Hours after Putin gave a speech asserting Russian control over four eastern Ukrainian regions, Biden called the action a “fraudulent” violation of international law that showed “contempt for peaceful nations everywhere”.

“The United States is never going to recognise this, and quite frankly, the world is not going to recognise it either,” Biden said from the White House. “He can’t seize his neighbour’s territory and get away with it. It is as simple as that.”

World leaders rallied around Biden in a forceful collective denunciation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Russia had committed a “serious violation of international law and Ukrainian sovereignty”, and he vowed on Twitter to help Ukraine “recover its full sovereignty over its entire territory”.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, called Putin’s move “an illegal and illegitimate land grab” and pledged to continue assisting Ukraine until it defeated the aggressor.

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Even among Russia’s traditional allies, no country stepped forward to recognise the annexation. Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, issued a statement before Putin’s speech calling for “respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and the noninterference in the internal affairs of other states”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to Russia’s claims by announcing that he was fast-tracking his country’s application to NATO. In a video, he accused the Kremlin of trying to “steal something that does not belong to it”.