Kremlin paves way to annex 4 regions of Ukraine after referendums that U.S. and Western allies have dismissed as illegitimate:
Pro-Moscow officials said vote to join Russia was overwhelming in what West calls sham referendumsA officer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia stands guard at a polling station with a Russian flag at right, during a referendum in Russian-controlled Luhansk, in Eastern Ukraine, on Tuesday.Pro-Moscow officials said all four occupied regions of Ukraine voted to join Russia.
Moscow-backed officials in the four occupied regions in southern and Eastern Ukraine said polls closed Tuesday afternoon after five days of voting. After the balloting, "the situation will radically change from the legal viewpoint, from the point of view of international law, with all the corresponding consequences for protection of those areas and ensuring their security," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.
Referendum committee members empty a ballot box to start counting them at a polling station during a referendum in Luhansk on Tuesday.The referendums follow a familiar Kremlin playbook for territorial expansion. In 2014, Russian authorities held a similar referendum on Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, under the close watch of Russian troops. Based on the voting, Russia annexed Crimea.
Tens of thousands of residents had already fled the regions because of the war, and images shared by those who remained showed armed Russian troops going door-to-door to pressure Ukrainians into voting.Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko, who left the port city after the Russians seized it after a months-long siege, said only about 20 per cent of the 100,000 estimated remaining residents cast ballots in the Donetsk referendum. Mariupol's pre-war population was 541,000.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the ballots were "a desperate move" by Putin. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said while visiting Kyiv on Tuesday that France was determined "to support Ukraine and its sovereignty and territorial integrity."
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