KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia was set to officially annex parts of Ukraine on Wednesday. where the occupied areas held a Kremlin-orchestrated “referendum” on life under Moscow rule that the Ukrainian government and the West denounced as illegal and rigged.
Armed troops had gone door to door with election officials to collect ballots in five days of voting. The oddly high margins in favor have been widely ridiculed and branded a bogus land grab by Russian leaders increasingly cornered by embarrassing military losses. in Ukraine.
Moscow-based administrations in the four regions of southern and eastern Ukraine said on Tuesday evening that 93% of the votes cast in the Zaporizhzhia region supported annexation, as did 87% in the Kherson region, 98% in the Luhansk region and 99% in Donetsk. .
“Forcing residents of these territories to fill out papers with the barrel of a gun is another Russian crime during its aggression against Ukraine,” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said, adding that the ballot was “a propaganda show” and “null”. and worthless.
The Foreign Ministry has asked the European Union, NATO and the G7 to “immediately and significantly” step up pressure on Russia with new sanctions and by significantly increasing their military aid to Kyiv.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has urged the 27 EU member countries to agree on a new set of sanctions against Russian officials and trade over the “bogus referendums”. She called the ballots an “illegal attempt to grab land and change international borders by force”.
Pro-Russian officials in all four regions said they would ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to incorporate their provinces into Russia based on the announced vote results. Separatist leaders Leonid Pasechnik in Luhansk and Denis Pushilin in Donetsk said they were leaving for Moscow to settle annexation formalities.
Western countries, however, rejected the ballot as a meaningless pretext staged by Moscow to try to legitimize its invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24.
US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Washington would propose a Security Council resolution to condemn the vote. The resolution would urge member states not to recognize any altered status of Ukraine and include a demand for Russia to withdraw troops from its neighbour, she tweeted.
The Kremlin remained impassive in the rain of criticism. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that at the very least Russia intended to drive Ukrainian forces out of the Donetsk region, where Moscow troops and separatist forces currently control around 60% of the territory.
In an interview with The Associated Press, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was determined to reclaim all the territory Russia seized during seven months of war. At the same time, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak insisted that annexation by Russia would not change anything on the battlefield.
“We will liberate our territory by military means,” Podolyak said. “And for us, our actions depend not so much on what the Russian Federation thinks or wants, but on the military capabilities that Ukraine has.”
Russia is calling up 300,000 reservists to fight in the war and has warned it may resort to nuclear weapons after Ukraine’s counteroffensive this month dealt Moscow’s forces heavy setbacks on the battlefield. Partial mobilization is deeply unpopular in some areas, however triggering protests, scattered violence and Russians fleeing the country by the tens of thousands.
The mobilization prompted the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to warn Americans in Russia to leave immediately because “Russia may refuse to recognize U.S. citizenship of dual nationals, deny them access to U.S. consular assistance, prevent their departure from Russia and to enlist dual nationals for military service”. .”
Previous embassy security alerts issued during the war also advised Americans to leave, saying they could be harassed and have difficulty obtaining consular assistance.
The Ukrainian military and Western analysts said Russia was sending troops to the front line without any training.
During a briefing, the Ukrainian army general staff said that the 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division of the 1st Russian tank army received new untrained troops.
The Ukrainian military also said the convicts were reinforcing Russian lines. He offered no evidence to support this claim, although Ukraine’s security services released audio recordings of allegedly monitored Russian phone conversations on the matter.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, cited an online video of a man who identified himself as a member of the 1st Tank Regiment, visibly upset, saying he and his colleagues would not would not receive training prior to shipment. to the Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson region.
“Mobilized men with a day or two of training are unlikely to significantly reinforce Russian positions affected by Ukrainian counteroffensives in the south and east,” the institute said.
The EU expressed outrage at Tuesday’s alleged sabotage of two undersea natural gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany and warned of retaliation for any attacks on European energy networks.
“All available information indicates that these leaks are the result of a deliberate act,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said, although the perpetrators have not been identified.
“Any deliberate disruption of Europe’s energy infrastructure is completely unacceptable and will be met with a strong and united response,” he said in a statement on behalf of EU members.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov said allegations that Russia could be behind the incidents were “predictable and foolish”, saying the damage caused huge economic losses to Russia.
The war has resulted in an energy stalemate between the EU, many of whose members have depended on Russian natural gas supplies for years, and Moscow.
The damage makes it unlikely the pipelines will be able to deliver gas to Europe this winter, analysts say.
The British Ministry of Defense said Ukraine’s counteroffensive was progressing slowly, encountering a stronger Russian defence.
In the partially occupied Donetsk region, Russian attacks have left five people dead and 10 injured in the past 24 hours, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the local military authority.
Authorities in the southern Ukrainian town of Nikopol said Russian rockets and artillery pounded the town overnight.
The city, across the Dnieper from Russian-occupied territory, saw 10 skyscrapers and private buildings hit, along with a school, power lines and other areas, said Valentyn Reznichenko, chief of the local military administration.
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