Voting has started in Russian-held regions of Ukraine on referendums to become part of Russia. — The Associated Press
The votes are being held in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.
A team of experts commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council also presented evidence Friday of crimes including beatings, electric shocks and forced nudity in Russian detention facilities, as well as executions in the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy. But the commission’s chairman didn’t specify who or which side in the war committed most of the alleged crimes.
As the votes were getting underway in the occupied regions, Russian social media sites were full of dramatic scenes of tearful families bidding farewell to men departing from military mobilization centers. In cities across the vast country, men hugged their weeping family members before departing as part of the draft. Russian anti-war activists, in the meantime, planned more protests against the mobilization.
Valentina Matviyenko, chair of Russia’s upper parliament house, said that residents of the occupied regions were voting for “life or death” at the referendums. The voting takes place against the backdrop of incessant fighting in Ukraine, with Russian and Ukrainian forces exchanging fire as both sides refuse to concede ground.
Heavy fighting also continued in the Donetsk region where Russian attacks targeted Toretsk and Sloviansk as well as several smaller towns. Russian shelling in Nikopol and Marhanets on the western bank of the Dnieper River resulted in the deaths of two people and the wounding of nine in Marhanets.