Ukraine: pro-Russian authorities claim landslide victory in annexation ‘referendums’

Denis Pouchiline, chef de la « République populaire de Donetsk » (RPD) a indiqué que 99,2 % des votants s'étaient prononcés en faveur du rattachement à la Russie.

Posted Sep 28, 2022, 7:11 AMUpdated on Sep 28, 2022 at 7:36 am

Unsurprisingly, the “yes” to the attachment of the regions of Ukraine controlled by Moscow to Russia won. The vote was organized over five days in the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, which together represent around 15% of Ukrainian territory.

Each of the Russian authorities in these regions has claimed a final victory. Thus, 87% of voters in the Kherson region and even 99.2% in the “People’s Republic of Donetsk” (DPR) were in favor of joining Russia. “The referendums are over,” wrote Dmitry Medvedev, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, on Telegram. “The results are unequivocal. Welcome back to Russia! “.

The next step is for the Russian Parliament, which is supposed to vote in the coming days on a treaty formalizing the integration of the four regions into Russian territory. In the wake of this parliamentary process, President Vladimir Putin could deliver a speech as early as September 30 to formally announce the annexation of Ukrainian territories, according to Russian agencies.

“Same scenario as in Crimea”, says Zelensky

In his first reaction after the announcement of the results, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured Tuesday evening in a video posted on Telegram that Ukraine would act “to defend its people” in each of its regions and “also in the currently occupied areas. of the Kharkiv region and in the Crimea”.

Speaking earlier Tuesday in a recorded message to the UN Security Council, he said that kyiv could not hold talks with Moscow after these “pseudo-referendums”, recalling that it is “the same scenario than in Crimea.

In 2014, President Putin signed a treaty linking Crimea to Russia just two days after the “referendum” that the Russian authorities had organized there, during a ceremony in the Kremlin, even before the vote of the Russian Parliament. This annexation was not recognized by the international community.

“Devilish action”, according to Blinken

The allies of Ukraine have denounced these elections, organized in an emergency in the face of the progress of the forces of kyiv. The UN Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs repeated Tuesday at a meeting of the Security Council, the support of the United Nations for “the territorial integrity of Ukraine” within its “recognized borders”.

The G7 has vowed to “never recognize” the results and Washington has promised a “severe” response through economic sanctions. The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, repeated that the United States and its allies would retaliate with new and “severe” sanctions against Russia, in the face of these annexations which he described as “diabolical action”.

Through the voice of its ambassador to the UN, China called for respect for “the territorial integrity of all countries”. Vladimir Putin, for his part, defended these polls as a means of “saving the local populations”, Moscow justifying its invasion by accusing kyiv of “Nazism” and of orchestrating a “genocide” of Russian speakers in Ukraine.

With Agencies

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