Residents in the Russian-controlled regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia were asked to vote on proposals to declare the four regions independent and then join Russia. The polls have been widely condemned in Kyiv and the West as illegal and appear to be a flimsy attempt to provide cover for Moscow’s illegal annexation of the territories. They were hastily organized after being announced earlier this week and are due to run until Tuesday. President Vladimir Putin signaled that Russia plans to claim the territories after the voting formalities are over and threatened on Wednesday that Moscow would be ready to defend its gains using all available means, including nuclear weapons. In Kyiv, officials said the votes would have no effect on the situation on the ground or the ongoing counteroffensive by the Ukrainian military. “There is no referendum. There is a propaganda exercise called a referendum,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in an interview. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s going to be some set-up stuff where there are Russian TV cameras.” The Guardian spoke to several people in the occupied city of Kherson via secure messaging apps on Thursday and Friday, all of whom reported a lack of activity on the ground. “I don’t know anyone who plans to go this weekend and vote. I’m against annexation, but why bother voting? Everything has already been decided for us – I’m sure they’ll count the votes however they like. It’s all pointless,” said Svitlana, who described herself as a largely apolitical stay-at-home mother. The speed with which the vote was organized seems to have meant that the occupation authorities had no time to launch a ‘get out the vote’ campaign or even to pressure people to vote. “I haven’t seen any election campaigns or billboards, I don’t have any information about where people should vote. There is a rumor that they will go door to door, but I don’t know,” said another person from Kherson, who asked not to be named, when reached on Friday morning. He described an increasingly tense atmosphere in recent weeks in the city, especially after the successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in the northeastern region of Kharkiv. Others described similar feelings. “It’s getting harder and harder to get in touch with people in the city. Now houses are constantly searched, phones are checked. I’m often too scared to talk about politics to my friends now, I’m afraid to get them into trouble,” said Olena, a resident of Kherson who left the city two weeks ago. In interviews with Russian media, the Russian-appointed deputy governor of the occupied Kherson region claimed that 198 polling stations had been opened in the region. “Our future is part of one, great and united country,” said Kirill Stremousov. Video from Donetsk reportedly shows “mobile polling stations” going door-to-door asking people to come to the courtyard and vote, attracting the electorate with loudspeakers. Stremusov falsely claimed that the vote met all international electoral standards. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which is monitoring the elections, listed a number of reasons why the referendums would not have legal force: they do not meet international standards, they conflict with Ukrainian law, the regions do not they are safe. there will be no independent observers and much of the population has fled. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 after a referendum that was also criticized as illegal, and has controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions since 2014 and runs them as “people’s republics”. The Kremlin had been rumored to be planning votes in eastern Ukraine since spring, but Moscow had hoped to gain full control of the four regions before ordering the referendum. When Ukraine launched its counteroffensive earlier this month, the plans were put on hold indefinitely. “A few weeks ago we saw all the advisers who came from Russia to organize this referendum flying home and it looked like they postponed it,” said an intelligence source in Kyiv. “We think they realized by counterattacking that the military situation was not conducive to doing that, but then after thinking about it for a while they decided it was better to do it badly than not at all.” Ukraine’s recapture of territory where Russians had promised locals it would be there “forever” has shocked other occupied territories and led many to recalibrate decisions about cooperation, Ukrainian officials say. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk claimed to have heard intercepted phone calls from the occupied territories of people trying to escape earlier cooperation agreements with the Russians, after being horrified by the success of the counter-offensive. “People were trying to distance themselves en masse from participating in the organization of this referendum. I heard these conversations, they were thinking about how to leave, how to write a letter of resignation,” he said. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the occupied territories since the invasion, some for Russia and others for territories controlled by Ukraine or western Europe. As the occupation continues, the Russians increasingly suppress dissent among those who remain. In the first days there were mass pro-Ukraine demonstrations in Kherson and other occupied cities, but these were gradually suppressed. In recent weeks there have been increased reports of door-to-door searches and crackdowns. “All those who had the chance left and those who had to stay behind for different reasons are too scared to protest. We are unlikely to see protests like the ones I participated in at the beginning of the war. It’s just not safe. The crackdown has intensified,” said Anzhela Hladka, an advertising executive from Kherson who left the city in April and is now in the Netherlands. “Last week a friend’s wife called to say that invaders broke into their house and took him. He was against the Russians, but he was not part of the resistance. He was let go the next day but has not been in contact since. I hear these stories all the time,” he said. In Kyiv, Vereschuk linked the referendums to Russia’s recent decision to mobilize reserves and called it a “passionate attempt” by Putin to justify the ongoing invasion to the Russian people. “It is up to the domestic public to explain why there were so many casualties. I don’t think your average Russian Ivan from Ivanovo really understands why his son died somewhere in a village in the Kherson region,” he said. There is no doubt that Russia will declare the referendums a resounding success, but what will happen next is harder to predict. Ukrainian officials say they will ignore any Russian claim to the territory, while Western leaders hope Putin’s threats of nuclear strikes are a desperate bluff. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and current vice-president of the Security Council, said directly in a Telegram post on Thursday that nuclear weapons could be used if the newly annexed territories are threatened. “This is why referendums are so feared in Kyiv and in the West,” he wrote.
