4 regions will stage vote to join Russia
Ukraine, West slam elections scheduled to start this week
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian-controlled regions of eastern and southern Ukraine announced plans Tuesday to start voting this week to become integral parts of Russia. The concerted and quickening Kremlin-backed efforts to swallow up four regions could set the stage for Moscow to escalate the war following Ukrainian successes on the battlefield.
The scheduling of referendums starting Friday in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions came after an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said the votes are needed and as Moscow is losing ground in the invasion it began Feb. 24.
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by Putin, said referendums that fold regions into Russia would make redrawn
frontiers “irreversible” and enable Moscow to use “any means” to defend them.
In 2014, Russia sent troops into Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and then held a referendum there that paved the way for its annexation by Moscow.
The upcoming votes, in territory Russia already controls, are all but certain to go Moscow’s way. But they already were being dismissed as illegitimate by Western leaders.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced them as a sham and tweeted that “Ukraine has every right to
liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say.”
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan slammed the planned votes.
“We will never recognize this territory as anything other than part of Ukraine,” he said, adding that they reflect Russia’s setbacks on the battlefield.
“These are not the actions of a confident country. These are not acts of strength,” he said.
In Donetsk, part of Ukraine’s Donbas region that has been gripped by rebel fighting since 2014 and which Putin has set as a primary objective of the invasion, separatist leader Denis Pushilin said the vote will “restore historic justice” to the territory’s “long-suffering people.”
They “have earned the right to be part of the great country that they always considered their motherland,” he said.
Pressure inside Russia for votes and from Moscowbacked leaders in Ukrainian regions that Moscow controls increased after a Ukrainian counteroffensive — bolstered by Western-supplied weaponry — that has recaptured large areas.
Former Kremlin speechwriter and Russian political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said on Facebook that Moscow-backed separatists appeared “scared that the Russians will abandon them” amid the Ukrainian offensive and forged ahead with referendum plans to force the Kremlin’s hand.
In another signal that Russia is digging in for a protracted and possibly ramped-up conflict, the Kremlin-controlled lower of house of Parliament voted Tuesday to toughen laws against desertion, surrender and looting by Russian troops. Lawmakers also voted to introduce possible 10-year prison terms for soldiers refusing to fight. If approved, as expected, by the upper house and then signed by Putin, the legislation would strengthen commanders’ hands against failing morale reported among soldiers.
In the Russian-occupied city of Enerhodar, shelling Tuesday around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant damaged a cooling system, a dining hall for staff and an unspecified “special building,” the city administration said in a statement. There were no further details about the damage.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there are no prospects for a diplomatic settlement of the conflict. Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008-2012, said on his messaging app channel that the referendums
are important to protect their residents and would “completely change” Russia’s trajectory.
“After they are held and the new territories are taken into Russia’s fold, a geopolitical transformation of the world will become irreversible,” Medvedev said.
“An encroachment on the territory of Russia is a crime that would warrant any means of self-defense,” he said, adding that Russia would enshrine the new territories in its constitution so no future Russian leader could hand them back.
The recapturing of territory, most notably in the Kharkiv region, has strengthened Ukraine’s arguments that its troops could deliver more stinging defeats to Russia with additional armament deliveries. More heavy weaponry is on its way, with Slovenia promising 28 tanks and Germany pledging four additional self-propelled howitzers.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss is expected to promise that in 2023, her government will “match or exceed” the $2.7 billion in military aid given to Ukraine this year.