Following so-called referendums that Kyiv and the West have criticised as a fraud, the first partial voting results from four Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine indicated huge majorities in support of joining Russia.
Votes that were hastily organised have been held during a five-day period in the four regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, which together make up around 15% of Ukrainian territory.
In what Ukraine and the West claimed was an illegal, coercive operation, Russian-installed personnel moved vote boxes from home to home in order to provide Russia a legal justification to invade the four areas.
Any attempt by the Ukrainians to reclaim them would therefore be seen as an attack on Russia, according to President Vladimir Putin. Last week, he said that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons to protect Russia’s “territorial integrity.”
Seven months after Moscow began its invasion of the nation, Ukraine has repeatedly warned that all possibility of peace negotiations would be destroyed if Russia annexed further territory.
According to RIA, preliminary tallies indicated majorities ranging from 96.97% in the Kherson area, based on 14% of the votes counted, to 98.19% in Zaporizhzhia, based on 18% of the votes counted.
With 14 percent and 13 percent of the ballots counted in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, respectively, the majorities were slightly under 98 percent.
According to Russia, it is up to the residents of the four areas to determine whether or not they wish to submit to Moscow’s sovereignty. It took steps to “Russify” the seized regions prior to the polls, including as distributing Russian passports to individuals and updating school curricula.
The upper chamber of the Russian parliament, led by Valentina Matvienko, stated that if the referendum results were positive, it may propose incorporating the four regions on October 4.
