Amid international protests, Moscow has held sham votes in the occupied Ukrainian territories for days. They are now over. The result is hardly surprising: According to the Kremlin, approval for joining Russia is in some cases more than 90 percent. The starting signal for waves of annexations?
The Russian occupiers have declared the sham referendums in several Ukrainian regions to be over and presented the first results of the votes, which violate international law. After the first ballots were counted at polling stations in Russia, more than 97 percent of voters from the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia voted in favor of their home regions joining Russia, Russian agencies reported. Ukrainian refugees in Russia have also been called to vote since last Friday.
A little later, Moscow also reported high approval ratings from the occupied territories themselves: According to initial information, more than 87 percent of voters in Cherson were in favor of joining Russia, and in Zaporizhia more than 92 percent, it said. An unprecedented wave of annexations is therefore likely to begin in the coming days.
The mock referendums are not recognized worldwide because they were held in violation of Ukrainian and international laws and without minimum democratic standards. Over the past few days, observers have pointed to numerous cases in which Ukrainian residents of the occupied territories have been forced to vote.
In a next step, it is expected that the occupation administrations deployed by Moscow will officially apply to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin for admission to Russian territory. The Kremlin had indicated that this could happen quickly. Before the start of the sham referendum, Putin had emphasized that the areas would then be completely under the protection of the nuclear power Russia.
The chairwoman of the Russian Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko, said shortly after the end of the five-day sham referendum that the upper house of parliament could decide on the accession of the occupied Ukrainian territories to Russia next Tuesday. The next scheduled meeting is scheduled for that day, Matviyenko said, according to Russian agencies. So far there is no need to call special meetings. The media had previously speculated that Putin could formally announce the annexation of the four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine in a speech before both chambers of the Russian parliament this Friday.
According to a newspaper report, Russia already has concrete plans for the incorporation of the Ukrainian regions: The plan is to form a new federal "Crimean district", the Russian newspaper "Vedomosti" reported, citing sources in the Federation Council. This district should include the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, as well as the occupied parts of the Cherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The new head of administration should therefore be Dmitri Rogozin, who was replaced as head of the Roskosmos space agency in July, it said. The media had already speculated in July that the hardliner and nationalist could become one of the Kremlin curators in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response to questions from journalists that if decisions were made to establish a new federal district, the Kremlin would inform about it. "We never announce such presidential decrees or personnel decisions," he was quoted as saying by the Interfax agency. However, the legal system and the executive are ready to accept new subjects into the federation after the votes in the regions. Legally and from the point of view of international law, the situation will change "cardinally".
