Moscow appeared poised to annex large swaths of Ukraine after declaring victory Wednesday in a series of deeply flawed elections held in occupied territory.
The sham referendums, which began last week, returned an unsurprisingly favorable result, with Moscow claiming landslide victories in favor of Russian annexation.
The votes — taken by armed Russian soldiers going door to door in occupied regions where Ukrainian civilians are believed to have been tortured for suspected allegiance to Kyiv — have been denounced by Ukraine and its Western allies as illegitimate.
“Forcing people in these territories to fill out some papers at the barrel of a gun is yet another Russian crime in the course of its aggression against Ukraine,” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The referendums were held in the occupied portions of four Ukrainian provinces, each supposedly supporting annexation by unrealistically high margins.
A woman casts her ballot during a referendum in Luhansk, one region of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia-backed separatists, on Tuesday Sept. 27, 2022. Voting began Friday in four Moscow-held regions of Ukraine on referendums to become part of Russia. APRussian officials claimed 87% of the ballots in the Kherson province supported annexation, as did 93% in Zaporizhzhia, 98% in the Luhansk province and a whopping 99% in Donetsk.
Russian occupation officials in those regions said Wednesday they would now formally request recognition as Russian territory from the Kremlin.
Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin — Russian-backed leaders in the self-styled Luhansk and Donetsk peoples’ republics, respectively — said late Wednesday that they were on their way to Moscow to iron out the formalities of annexation.
Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak denounced Russia’s plans and said that Kyiv intended to retake all of the territory expected to be annexed.
“We will liberate our territory by military means,” Podolyak said. “For us, our actions depend not so much on what the Russian Federation thinks or wants, but on the military capabilities that Ukraine has.”
The Kremlin announced the sham referendums on annexation as Ukrainian forces have reclaimed large swaths of territory during an offensive this month. ISWThe Biden administration backed Kyiv, reiterating its refusal to recognize Russian claims to the occupied territory.
“This remains Ukrainian territory and Ukraine has every right to continue to fight for their full sovereignty,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.
“In response, we will work with our allies and partners to impose additional economic costs” on Russia, she said.
The use of a sham referendum to lend legitimacy to a land grab is a tried-and-true Kremlin tactic.
A similar referendum was used in 2014 as a pretext for Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, which the international community still regards as part of Ukraine.
Following that annexation, sham referenda were held in smaller regions of Luhansk and Donetsk to declare independent “people’s republics” around those provinces’ eponymous capital cities.
Ahead of the referendum votes last week, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s security council, said that annexation would make the Ukrainian territories an “irreversible” addition to Russia and allow Moscow to use “any means” to defend them.
“Encroachment onto Russian territory is a crime which allows you to use all the forces of self-defense,” Medvedev said.
With Post wires
