LAST UPDATE | 20 Sep 2022
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR Putin had been expected to deliver an address to the nation this evening as Moscow-held regions of the Ukraine prepare to vote on annexation, however, it has reportedly been delayed until early tomorrow.
Separatist authorities in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, said they would hold the vote over five days beginning Friday this week.
The regions are on the frontlines of a sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive that has seen Kyiv’s forces retake hundreds of towns and villages that had been controlled by Russia for months.
Their integration into Russia would represent a major escalation of the conflict as Moscow could try to say it was defending its own territory from Ukrainian forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had been expected to give a speech to the nation this evening. However, it has reportedly been delayed until tomorrow morning.
Sky News has reported that Sergei Markov, a Russian political scientist who is a former close advisor to Putin, announced on Telegram that the president’s address has been delayed until tomorrow.
Similarly, editor of state media outlet RT, Margarita Simonyan, wrote the message “go to sleep” on Telegram.
Washington, Berlin and Paris denounced the ballots and said the international community would never recognise the results while NATO said the votes marked a “further escalation” of the war.
Kyiv said the “sham” referendums were meaningless and vowed to “eliminate” threats posed by Russia, saying its forces would keep retaking territory regardless of what Moscow or its proxies announced.
Denis Miroshnichenko, a separatist leader in the Lugansk region, said pro-Moscow lawmakers had voted to hold the vote from 23 to 27 September.
Shortly afterwards, a news portal associated with separatist authorities in Donetsk said the region would hold a ballot over the same dates.
Large parts of the industrial Donbas area – made up of Donetsk and Lugansk – have been controlled by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014, after nationwide demonstrations ousted a Kremlin-friendly Ukrainian president.
‘Restore historical justice’
Russia at the time annexed the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea from Ukraine with a vote that was criticised by Kyiv and the West, which imposed sanctions in response.
Ahead of the announcement by separatist and pro-Moscow leaders, Russia’s lower house of parliament drafted new legislation tightening prison time for soldiers who surrender, desert or loot.
Authorities in the southern Kherson region of Ukraine also announced today they would hold a vote over the same dates.
“The incorporation of the Kherson region into the Russian Federation will secure our territory and restore historical justice,” said the Moscow-installed head of that region, Vladimir Saldo.
He echoed a phrase used earlier in the day by Russia’s former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev who invoked correcting historical wrongs, but also said the votes would bolster Russian forces.
“Encroachment into Russian territory is a crime and if it is committed, that allows you to use all possible force in self-defence,” Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, said on social media.
Pro-Moscow authorities in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region – home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant – also announced they would hold a vote on the region’s “territorial allegiance”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, vowed a decisive response from Kyiv.
‘Sham’ votes
“Ukraine will solve the Russian issue. The threat can be eliminated only by force,” Yermak said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denounced the “sham” votes and said they must be rejected by the international community. French President Emmanuel Macron called them a “travesty”.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the referendums were “an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
“If this does transpire, the United States will never recognize Russia’s claims to any purportedly annexed parts of Ukraine,” he said.
Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the referendums would change nothing.
“Ukraine has every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say,” he said in a statement online.
At the United Nations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a “dignified way out” of the seven-month crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion.
The votes come at a decisive moment.
Ukraine’s forces in the east are now pushing towards the village of Bilogorivka whose capture by Russia in May decimated Moscow’s forces as they crossed the Siverskyi Donets river nearby.
Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said the vote announcements were a direct result of the success of Ukraine’s counter-offensive in east Ukraine.
Putin, she said, wants to threaten the full use of Russia’s military, including nuclear weapons, in defending Russian territory, including newly annexed regions.
“Putin does not want to win this war on the battlefield. Putin wants to force Kyiv to surrender without a fight,” she said.
The head of Russian state-media group, RT, Margarita Simonyan said the announcements marked either “the eve of our imminent victory or the eve of nuclear war”.
Speaking with newly appointed foreign ambassadors in Moscow today ahead of the opening of the UN General Assembly, Putin said that Russia would pursue its “sovereign course.”
The Russian leader earlier today met with defence industry representatives and demanded the sector “resolve the problem of the prompt and full provision of defense industry factories with domestically-manufactured components”.
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