A Kremlin-orchestrated referendum kicked off on Friday in occupied regions of Ukraine to try to annex them to Russia, with officials taking ballots to apartments accompanied by armed police to capture votes.
kyiv and the West condemned the move, saying it is a rigged election whose outcome has been preordained by Moscow.
Referendums in the Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhia and Donetsk regions were widely seen as a prelude to Moscow annexing them. The vote, supervised by Russian-installed authorities, will continue until Tuesday, and its result will almost certainly be favorable to the Kremlin.
Authorities in the Kherson region said residents of a small Moscow-controlled area in neighboring Mikolaiv province will also be able to vote, and that area was “incorporated” into Kherson until Russian forces have taken all of Mikolaiv.
Ukraine and the West called the referendums an illegitimate attempt by Moscow to seize a large part of the country, from the Russian border to the Crimean peninsula. A similar vote was held in 2014 in Crimea before Russia annexed it, a move that most of the world considered illegal.
Under the argument that they do it for security reasons, the electoral authorities took the ballots to people’s houses and installed mobile voting booths. Russian state television showed one of those electoral teams accompanied by a masked policeman carrying an assault rifle.
Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol in the Zaporizhia region, told The Associated Press that Russian citizens and Crimeans were brought to the city to urge people to vote.
“The Russians see an overwhelming reluctance and fear to go to the referendum, and they are forced to bring people … to create an image and an illusion of voting,” he said. “Groups of collaborators and Russians, along with armed soldiers, are conducting a door-to-door vote,” but few people open the door for them.”
know
Reaction.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians in the occupied regions to undermine the referendums and share information about the people carrying out “this farce”.
He also urged Ukrainians to avoid being called up in the Russian mobilization announced last Wednesday.
