FLIGHT FROM ANNEXATION

ENTIRE villages are emptying out as Ukrainians flee from Russian annexation, refugees say. “It’s funny. Nobody voted, yet the results are in,” laughed Lyubomir Boyko, 43, from Golo Pristan, a village in Russian-occupied Kherson province as he waited this week outside a Unaid office with his family at a refugee reception centre. Russia prepared yesterday to annex a swathe of Ukrainian territory the size of Portugal and which included the Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. | Reuters and AFP