Subverting a democratic process to exert its will, Russia began orchestrating votes on Friday in territories it occupies in Ukraine, an effort that is expected to culminate with the annexation of an area larger than Portugal.
While the Kremlin has used referendums and annexation in the past, the boldness of President Vladimir V. Putin’s gambit in Ukraine far exceeds anything tried before. The ballots being distributed had one question: Do you wish to secede from Ukraine and create an independent state that will enter the Russian Federation?
“We will be able to make our historic choice,” Kirill Stremousov, a leader of the Russian occupation administration in the southern region of Kherson, said in a statement. He said the wording on the ballots — in both Ukrainian and Russian — was “in accordance with international law”, but even before the first vote, the referendum plans were met with international condemnation.
President Biden, speaking to the UN General Assembly this week, said that “if nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences”, then the global security order established to prevent the horrors of World War II from repeating will be imperilled. Russian proxy officials in four regions — Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizka in the south — earlier this week announced plans to hold referendums over four days beginning on Friday. Russia controls nearly all of two of the four regions, Luhansk and Kherson, but only a fraction of the other two, Zaporizka and Donetsk.
Ukrainian officials have dismissed the voting as grotesque theatre — staging polls in cities laid to waste by Russian forces and abandoned by most residents. President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Ukraine’s allies for their steadfast support and said: “The farce” of “sham referenda” would do nothing to change his nation’s fight to drive Russia from Ukraine.
To give the appearance of widespread participation, minors ages 13 to 17 have been encouraged to vote, the Security Services of Ukraine warned on Thursday.
New York Times News Service
