Residents of Russian-held regions of Ukraine are being forced to vote in referendums on whether their home regions should become part of Russia, local officials say, setting the stage for Moscow to annex the Ukrainian territory. Voting began on Friday in the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk provinces of southern and eastern Ukraine and will continue until Tuesday. Ukrainian officials say residents in those areas are welcome to vote in front of armed soldiers. Oleksandr Starukh, the Ukrainian governor of Zaporizhzhia, wrote on the online messaging service Telegram that residents are not voting freely. “It’s not hard to see what mark people will put under automatic weapon muzzles,” he said. He added that the results of the fake referendums are predetermined and that Russia will announce fake vote totals for the Kremlin for further handling. Yaroslav Yanusevych, the Ukrainian head of Kherson’s military administration, said on Telegram that Russian soldiers and collaborators are going to residents’ homes with assault rifles and pressuring them to participate in referendums. He said those who speak out or refuse to vote are told they have 24 hours to leave. He added that Kherson residents who received Russian passports since the invasion of Ukraine are being served with conscription, raising concern over the prospect of Russia trying to draw Ukrainian men into its war effort. The Kremlin announced the referendums immediately after the Ukrainian army liberated villages and towns in the Kharkiv region in a lightning offensive. When the votes are concluded, Moscow is widely expected to annex the regions, which could have dangerous implications. Russia has declared it will defend any newly annexed land as its own, possibly using nuclear weapons. And he announced last week that he planned to call up 300,000 reservists, the first such mobilization since World War II. Russian state news agencies are reporting that President Vladimir Putin may give a speech on the referendums in Russia Federal Assembly on September 30. Mr. Putin suggested last week that he would consider using nuclear weapons against Ukraine. He said in a televised address that Russia would “use all available weapons systems” to defend its territory. “This is not a bluff,” he added. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently said something similar. During a press conference after addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he said that the regions where votes are being held would be under Moscow’s “full protection” if annexed by Russia. When asked whether Russia would have reason to use nuclear weapons to defend the territories, Mr Lavrov said that Russian territory, including territory “further included” in Russia’s constitution in the future, “is under its full protection state”. “All laws, doctrines, concepts and strategies of the Russian Federation apply throughout its territory,” he said. The possible Russian annexations raise the risk of an immediate military conflict between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose member states already supply weapons to the Ukrainian military. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram that his country will recover all the territories seized by Russia since 2014, when Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula. “We will definitely liberate our entire country – from Kherson to Luhansk region, from Crimea to Donetsk region,” he said. Meanwhile, voting continues in the four occupied territories. Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk, said during an interview on Ukrainian television that the referendums do not resemble a traditional voting process. He described the vote in the region as an “absolutely fake referendum”. Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign minister, tweeted on Saturday that Ukraine had requested an “urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on Russia’s fake referendums on the occupied territories of Ukraine.” “Russia must be held accountable for its further efforts to change Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders in violation of the UN Charter,” he added. Western officials have said they will ignore the results of the referendums. Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said in a statement last week that Canada “strongly condemns the sham referendums being planned in occupied areas of Ukraine.” “These sham exercises with predetermined outcomes will have zero legitimacy and Canada will not recognize them. The borders will not change. Ukraine’s territory will remain Ukraine’s.” On Saturday, possibly in response to Russia’s losses in Kharkiv, the country’s defense ministry announced a change in leadership. It said its deputy minister in charge of logistics, General Dmitry Bulgakov, had been replaced by Colonel General Mikhail Mizinchev, a longtime military official whom the EU called the “butcher of Mariupol” for his role in orchestrating a deadly siege of the port city. of Ukraine at the beginning of the war. Michael Bociurkiw, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, a think tank, said what happens next is “very critical.” Mr. Putin, he said, “will say that any attack on these territories is an attack on the Russian Federation, we retain the means to retaliate by any means possible. Of course this will be widely condemned by the international community. But I think it should be seen as a huge red line.” He said the rhetoric at the UN General Assembly in New York would not change Mr Putin’s course of action. “Responds to power.” Reported by Reuters.