Voting in the provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which account for about 15% of Ukrainian territory, is to be held from Friday to Tuesday. Russia’s leaders on Tuesday announced plans for the votes, a challenge to the West that could sharply escalate the war. The results are seen as a foregone conclusion in favor of annexation, and Ukraine and its allies have already made it clear they will not recognize the results. Kyiv this month launched a counteroffensive that has recaptured large swaths of territory, seven months after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, starting a war that has killed thousands, displaced millions and damaged the global economy. Referendums have been discussed for months by pro-Moscow authorities, but Ukraine’s recent victories have prompted a scramble by officials to schedule them. With Putin also this week announcing a military plan to raise 300,000 troops to fight in Ukraine, Moscow appears to be trying to regain the upper hand in the conflict. Russia claimed the referendums were an opportunity for people in the region to have their say. “From the beginning of the operation … we have said that the peoples of the respective territories should decide their own destiny, and the whole current situation confirms that they want to be masters of their own destiny,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier. week. Ukraine says Russia intends to brand the referendum results as a sign of popular support and then use them as a pretext for annexation, similar to its 2014 seizure of Crimea, which the international community has not recognized. By incorporating the four regions into Russia, Moscow could justify military escalation as necessary to defend its territory. Putin on Wednesday said Russia would “use all means at our disposal” to protect itself, an apparent reference to nuclear weapons. “This is no bluff,” he said. “Trespassing on Russian territory is a crime that allows you to use all self-defense forces,” Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, said in a Telegram post on Tuesday. “That’s why they are so afraid of these referendums in Kyiv and the West.” Vladimir Vysotsky, the head of the Central Election Commission of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, inspects a polling station ahead of a referendum in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine Photo: AP In the vote that began on Friday, a result in favor of Russia is seen as inevitable. The Crimean referendum in 2014, criticized internationally as rigged, had an official result of 97% in favor of formal annexation. “If all this is declared as Russian territory, they can declare that this is a direct attack on Russia, so they can fight without reservations,” Luhansk regional governor Serhii Gaidai told Ukrainian television. The referendums have been denounced by world leaders including US President Joe Biden, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as international bodies from NATO, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Europe (OSCE). “Fake referendums” are “illegal and illegal,” NATO said on Thursday. The OSCE, which is monitoring the elections, said the results would not be legally binding because they did not comply with Ukrainian law or international standards and the areas were unsafe. There will be no independent observers and much of the pre-war population has fled. Russia already considers Luhansk and Donetsk, which together make up the Donbas region that Moscow partially seized in 2014, as independent states. Ukraine and the West consider all parts of Ukraine held by Russian forces to be illegally occupied. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions, with only about 60% of the Donetsk region in Russian hands.
