Facing setbacks on the battlefield, Moscow pressed to consolidate its slipping hold over occupied parts of Ukraine on Tuesday as Russian proxy officials scheduled referendums this weekend on formally joining Russia and top Kremlin officials endorsed the moves.

Across occupied parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, Moscow-installed officials have announced plans to hold elections beginning on Friday to become part of Russia. The moves come after Ukrainian forces routed Russians from the northeast and are on the offensive in the east and south. Russia has lost tens of thousands of troops, is struggling to recruit new soldiers and is facing a growing backlash, even from some allies, over its bloody invasion.

The plans for referendums, which are certain to draw international condemnation, appear to have the backing of the Kremlin. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said the referendums would allow the territories to decide their future. “The current situation confirms that they want to be the masters of their future,” Lavrov told Rossiya-1, a state television network. Ukraine said the moves signalled desperation by Russia, and its allies have said that such votes would be illegal.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, said on Tuesday that talk about annexation was little more than a “sedative” for the Russian audience as Moscow tried to make sense of its losses on the battlefield.

Any socalled referendum, he added, would not stop “HIMARS and the armed forces from destroying occupiers on our land”, referring to an American-supplied missile system that has helped the Ukrainians target Russian forces. Russian proxy officials in three regions — Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, and Kherson in the south — announced plans to hold referendums beginning on Friday to join Russia. Putin recognised separatist enclaves in Donetsk and Luhansk as independent.

(New York Times News Service)