Zelenskyy brands Kremlin-organised votes a ‘farce’
RUSSIAN forces launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kremlin-orchestrated votes continued in occupied regions of Ukraine to pave the way for their annexation by Moscow.
Zaporizhzhia governor Oleksandr Starukh said the Russians targeted infrastructure facilities in the Dnieper River city, and one of the missiles hit an apartment building, killing one and injuring seven.
Russian forces also struck other areas in Ukraine, damaging residential buildings and civilian infrastructure.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence said Russia was targeting the Pechenihy dam on the Siverskyi Donets River in northeastern Ukraine following previous strikes on a dam on a reservoir near Kryvyi Rih, causing flooding on the Inhulets River.
“Ukrainian forces are advancing further downstream along both rivers,” the MoD said. “As Russian commanders become increasingly concerned about their operational setbacks, they are probably attempting to strike the sluice gates of dams, in order to flood Ukrainian military crossing points.”
Amid the fighting, voting continued in Kremlin-organised referendums in occupied areas – votes that Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed as a sham with no legal force.
In the five-day voting in the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south that began on Friday, officials, accompanied by police officers, carried ballots to homes and set up mobile polling stations.
The votes are set to wrap up on Tuesday. Voting was also held in Russia, where refugees and other residents of those regions cast ballots. Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow will heed the residents’ will, a clear indication that the Kremlin is poised to quickly annex the regions once the voting is over.
Ukraine and the West said the vote was an illegitimate attempt by Moscow to slice away a large part of the country, stretching from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula, similar to a referendum in Crimea in 2014.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians in occupied regions to undermine the referendums, branding them a“farce”.