According to the local separatists, the overwhelming majority of the “referendums” in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Cherson regions, which Western countries criticized as bogus referendums, were in favor of the annexation.
The four regions form an important land corridor between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, annexed in 2014. Together with Crimea, they make up around 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory.
The separatist chiefs of the four regions have meanwhile arrived in Moscow to complete the annexation, according to Russian news agencies. On Wednesday they formally asked Putin to include the regions in the Russian Federation.
US President Joe Biden stressed that the US would “never, never, never” recognize Russia’s claims to Ukrainian sovereignty. The so-called referendum was “a fraud, an absolute fraud”. Other western governments made similar statements.
The West also warned Putin against using nuclear weapons. The Kremlin boss had previously indirectly threatened to defend the four regions with nuclear weapons if necessary.
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) renewed her criticism of the “referendums”. People were “taken from their homes or their jobs” at gunpoint “to cast votes in glass ballot boxes,” she said in Berlin. “This is the opposite of free and fair elections.”
After the “referendums,” Kyiv called for further Western sanctions against Russia and more weapons. “Ukraine cannot and will not tolerate any attempts by Russia to take any part of our land,” said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He called an emergency meeting of the National Security Council for Friday.
About a month ago, Kyiv launched a counteroffensive in the east and south of the country. The advance of the Ukrainian troops prompted Moscow to quickly organize the so-called referendums and hastily mobilize hundreds of thousands of reservists. The recruitment campaign had prompted a number of Russians to leave the country. At the same time, Moscow continued to mobilize the reservists.
At a video conference of the Russian Security Council in Moscow on Thursday, Putin called for “correcting” “mistakes” in the partial mobilization. Fathers of families, the sick and the elderly should not be drafted, Putin stressed. Such mistakes should not be repeated.
The Ukrainian army on Thursday gained complete control of the city of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region in the north-east of the country, reporters from the AFP news agency reported. Kyiv had already recaptured a large part of the railway junction at the beginning of the month, and now Kiev’s armed forces are also pushing back the remaining Russian troops.
Alongside this, Ukrainian forces appear to be focused on recapturing Lyman, a key railway junction in the Donetsk region. The Ukrainian troops have not commented on this, but pro-Kremlin authorities in the region have acknowledged heavy fighting.
“The enemy regularly launches attempts to encircle the city,” senior Donetsk official Alexei Nikonorov told Russian television. According to the US research center Institute for the Study of War, after recapturing Lyman, Ukraine could advance further in both Donetsk and Luhansk.
