Zaporizhzhia Voted 93.11% to Join Russia
Newslooks- KYIV, Ukraine (AP)
Pro-Moscow officials: People in occupied areas of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia voted to join Russia in Kremlin-run referendums, residents in one of the four occupied areas of Ukraine voted to join Russia in a Kremlin-orchestrated vote that has been dismissed by the U.S. and its Western allies as illegitimate. According to Russia-installed election officials in Zaporizhzhia region, 93.11% of the ballots case in the vote were in support of the annexation. Results from three other Ukrainian regions were expected to follow shortly. The preordained outcome sets the stage for a dangerous new phase in Russia’s seven-month war in Ukraine because it is expected to serve as a pretext for Moscow to annex the four areas. That could happen as soon as Friday.
The Russian-run referendum votes took place over five days, from Sept. 23 through Sept. 27, despite international outrage.
The referendums are widely viewed as an initial Kremlin move toward formal Russian annexation of the territories, even as the exact timetable remains unclear.
With around 15% of the vote counted, preliminary results reported Tuesday by Russian state media showed well over 97% voting in favor of the measure in all the regions.
On Sept. 20, the day before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a new military draft and a major new push in his war against Ukraine, officials in the Moscow-backed separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk announced they would hold the referendums on joining Russia. Authorities in occupied parts of the southern Ukrainian oblasts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson quickly followed suit, declaring that they too would hold votes on whether to break away from Ukraine and become part of the Russian Federation.
All four of these regions are active war zones which many residents have fled, with reports of fighting and explosions on a daily basis.
Local Ukrainian officials reported numerous incidents of voter coercion in the five days of voting, with photos and videos popping up on social media indicating a process that was neither free nor fair. According to news reports and social media posts from the eastern and southern regions, the process of collecting “votes” was conducted by officials with armed security forces going door to door.
One video widely shared on the Telegram messaging app and Twitter shows security footage purportedly from an apartment building in an occupied area, with two armed soldiers escorting officials carrying ballot boxes through a stairwell. Another video showed residents at a polling place filling out ballots with Russian officials monitoring across the table.
Most of the vote was carried out by poll workers — under armed guard — bringing paper ballots door to door, as the process was so rushed there wasn’t time to set up more complex voting infrastructure, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.
Local officials only opened polling stations to the public on the final day of voting. Russia and its proxies also organized voting for Ukrainians who had fled to Russia from the regions amid the conflict. Russia’s own Central Election Commission was charged with monitoring the vote.
The process — and outcome — was reminiscent of the Kremlin’s hastily staged referendum in Crimea eight years ago, after Russian troops seized that part of Ukraine in 2014. The official outcome of that referendum, which was also denounced as a farce by international observers, was that more than 95% of voters wanted to join the Russian Federation.
Following the vote, Moscow quickly annexed Crimea. In response, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations all rejected the Crimea referendum as illegal and sanctioned Russia.
Western leaders say the elections in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine are also illegal under international law and that they will not accept the outcome.
“Russia’s referenda are a sham,” President Biden said in a statement Sept. 23. “The United States stands with our partners around the world — and with every nation that respects the core tenets of the U.N.charter — in rejecting whatever fabricated outcomes Russia will announce.”
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “We’ve been very clear that we are prepared and we will impose additional severe and swift costs on Russia for proceeding with the annexation … the Ukrainians will continue to do what they need to do to get back the land that has been taken from them. We will continue to support them in that effort.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed that Ukraine will never accept what he called “pseudo-referendums.” Zelenskyy says residents of the occupied territories were forced at times at gunpoint to vote. He previously warned that if Moscow moved forward with the referendums, “it will foreclose every possibility of negotiations with Ukraine.”
Multiple Russian news outlets have reported that Putin will address his Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, on Friday — a move widely interpreted as a chance for the Russian leader to celebrate the regions’ “reunification” with Russia.
Yet a senior Russian lawmaker on Tuesday insisted the parliament would take no extraordinary steps to vote on annexation — a key formal step toward ratification — ahead of regularly scheduled parliamentary sessions starting next week.
