Kremlin proxy authorities in occupied, war-torn Ukraine on Friday declared that “voting” had begun in staged referendums, and that Moscow’s desired outcome — a claim of public support for the annexation of Ukrainian territory — was assured.
KHARKIV, Ukraine — The so-called votes, which are being orchestrated in parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of eastern and southeastern Ukraine controlled by the Russian military, are illegal under Ukrainian and international law and, in any case, would not remotely meet basic democratic standards for free and fair elections.
But by rushing ahead to stage the current votes, Moscow has broken even its own prior standard that such votes should be held only after Russia has full military control, reflecting President Vladimir Putin’s concern that his troops face a real risk of defeat.The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that Russian would move swiftly to absorb the territories into Russia.
For residents, it was not entirely clear how the “voting” procedure would be carried out. The proxy authorities said that much of the voting would be house-to-house or in “public places,” in the occupied areas and in Russia.
“I was talking to one guy who said he’d stay out of the house for the next week to avoid being forced to vote,” the man said. “I said it might be better to lock yourself in.”Still, sympathies in the town are divided, as they have been since Russia began fomenting an armed separatist uprising in Luhansk and Donetsk in 2014 in response to Ukraine’s pro-European Maidan revolution.
Potentially scarier, the man said, is what may come after the vote. No one doubts that the announced result will be overwhelmingly in favor of joining Russia, but once that happens, he said he fears that he and other men in occupied Ukraine could be mobilized to fight on the side of their occupiers and against their own countrymen.
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