Voting on the union with Russia in the Donetsk region
Photo: dpa
Anyone who seriously wants to sell the world an election result of almost 100 percent has to live in a parallel universe. That’s probably how it is in those offices where the “special military operation” against the Ukraine is planned, carried out and propagated. The Russian news agency Tass reported 99.2 and 98.4 percent approval for the union with Russia from Donetsk and Luhansk, not much less from Cherson and Zaporizhia. From devastated areas from which hundreds of thousands have fled, whose homes will finally be taken away with the annexation to Russia.
In this respect, the extremely short-term referendums are the continuation of the war by other means. Russia uses it for massive land grabs; no matter what moral phrases and nationalist slogans it is covered with. This does not make the situation in Ukraine any safer. Kyiv calls for even more and more powerful weapons, Moscow combines its simulation of democracy with nuclear threats. Both sides with the claim to protect their citizens. A way out of this murderous madness is far and wide not in sight.
