Kyiv and Western nations dismiss referendums as a sham and pledge not to recognise their results
\nKYIV
\n: Russia launched referendums on Friday aimed at annexing four occupied regions of Ukraine, drawing condemnation from Kyiv and Western nations who dismissed the votes as a sham and pledged not to recognise their results.
\nUkrainian officials said people were banned from leaving some occupied areas until the four-day vote was over, armed groups were going into homes, and employees were threatened with the sack if they did not participate.
\nUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a nightly address that the votes would be \u201cunequivocally condemned\u201d by the world, along with the mobilisation Russia began this week, including in Crimea and other areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
\n\u201cThese are not just crimes against international law and Ukrainian law, these are crimes against specific people, against a nation,\u201d Zelenskiy said.
\nThe votes on becoming part of Russia were hastily-organised after Ukraine recaptured large swathes of the northeast in a counter-offensive earlier this month.
\nWith Russian President Vladimir Putin also announcing a military draft this week to enlist 300,000 troops to fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin appears to be trying to regain the upper hand in the grinding conflict since its Feb 24 invasion.
\nZelenskiy also addressed people in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia, and said they should resist efforts to mobilise them to fight.
\n\u201cHide from Russian mobilisation in any way you can. Avoid draft orders. Try to move to the territory of free Ukraine,\u201d he said, urging those who did end up in the Russian armed forces to \u201csabotage,\u201d \u201cinterfere\u201d and pass on intelligence to Ukraine.
\nBy incorporating the four areas, Moscow could portray attacks to retake them as an attack on Russia itself – potentially using that to justify even a nuclear response.
\nPutin and other Russian officials have mentioned nuclear weapons as an option in extremis: a terrifying prospect in a war that has already killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted millions and pummelled the global economy.
\nVoting in the provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the east and southeast, representing about 15% of Ukrainian territory, was due to run from Friday to Tuesday.
\n\u201cToday, the best thing for the people of Kherson would be not to open their doors,\u201d said Yuriy Sobolevsky, the displaced first deputy council chairman of Kherson region.
\nIn the Donetsk region, the turnout on Friday was 23.6%, Tass cited a local official as saying. Over 20.5% of voters eligible to vote in the Zaporizhzhia region and 15% of those in the Kherson region voted on Friday, Russia\u2019s Interfax news agency reported, citing local electoral officials. \u201cIn our view, that\u2019s enough for the first day of voting,\u201d the head of Kherson\u2019s Russian-installed election commission, Marina Zakharova, was quoted as saying. Polling stations were also set up in Moscow, for residents of those regions now living in Russia. Flag-waving government supporters attended rallies in Moscow and St Petersburg in favour of the referendums and the war effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kyiv and Western nations dismiss referendums as a sham and pledge not to recognise their results KYIV : Russia launched referendums on Friday aimed at annexing four occupied regions of Ukraine, drawing condemnation from Kyiv and Western nations who dismissed the votes as a sham and pledged not to recognise their results. Ukrainian officials said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-285435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n