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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian-controlled regions of eastern and southern Ukraine announced plans Tuesday to start voting this week to become integral parts of Russia. The concerted and quickening Kremlin-backed efforts to swallow up four regions could set the stage for Moscow to escalate the war following Ukrainian successes on the battlefield.
The
scheduling of referendums starting Friday in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly
Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions came after a close ally of
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the votes are needed and as Moscow is
losing ground in the invasion it began nearly seven months ago, increasing
pressure on the Kremlin for a stiff response.
Former
President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired
by Putin, said referendums that fold regions into Russia itself would make
redrawn frontiers “irreversible” and enable Moscow to use “any means” to defend
them.
The votes,
in territory Russia already controls, are all but certain to go Moscow’s way
but are unlikely to be recognized by Western governments who are backing
Ukraine with military and other support that has helped its forces seize
momentum on battlefields in the east and south.
Ukrainian
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced them as a sham and tweeted that
“Ukraine has every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating
them whatever Russia has to say.”
U.S.
national security adviser Jake Sullivan slammed the planned votes.
“We will
never recognize this territory as anything other than part of Ukraine,” he
said, adding that they reflect Russia’s setbacks on the battlefield.
“These are
not the actions of a confident country. These are not acts of strength,” he
said.
In New York,
where he is attending the U.N. General Assembly, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
said: “It is very, very clear that these sham referendums cannot be accepted.”
Latvian
Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics called for more sanctions against Russia and
more weapons for Ukraine, tweeting: “We must say no to Russian blackmail.”
In Donetsk,
part of Ukraine’s wider Donbas region that has been gripped by rebel fighting
since 2014 and which Putin has set as a primary objective of the invasion,
separatist leader Denis Pushilin said the vote will “restore historic justice”
to the territory’s “long-suffering people.”
They “have
earned the right to be part of the great country that they always considered
their motherland,” he said.
In partly
Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia, pro-Russia activist Vladimir Rogov said: “The
faster we become part of Russia, the sooner peace will come.”
Pressure
inside Russia for votes and from Moscow-backed leaders in Ukrainian regions
that Moscow controls increased after a Ukrainian counteroffensive — bolstered
by Western-supplied weaponry — that has recaptured large areas.
Former
Kremlin speechwriter and Russian political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said on
Facebook that Moscow-backed separatists appeared “scared that the Russians will
abandon them” amid the Ukrainian offensive and forged ahead with referendum plans
to force the Kremlin’s hand.
In another
signal that Russia is digging in for a protracted and possibly ramped-up
conflict, the Kremlin-controlled lower of house of parliament voted Tuesday to
toughen laws against desertion, surrender and looting by Russian troops.
Lawmakers also voted to introduce possible 10-year prison terms for soldiers
refusing to fight. If approved, as expected, by the upper house and then signed
by Putin, the legislation would strengthen commanders’ hands against failing
morale reported among soldiers.
In an
interview in New York with the “PBS News Hour,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan said that if peace is to prevail in Ukraine, “the returning of the land
that was invaded will become really important.”
He also
repeated his long-held position that the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Russia
in 2014, should be returned to Ukraine. Turkey has strong ethnic ties to
Crimean Tatars. “Since 2014, we have been talking to my dear friend Putin about
this, and this is what we have requested from him,” he said.
In the
Russian-occupied city of Enerhodar, shelling Tuesday around Europe’s largest
nuclear power plant damaged a cooling system, a dining hall for staff and an
unspecified “special building,” the city administration said in a statement.
There were no further details about the damage.
The power
station, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, has been a focus for concern for
months because of fears that shelling could lead to a radiation leak. Russia
and Ukraine each blames the other for the shelling.
Kremlin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there are no prospects for a diplomatic settlement
of the conflict. Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008-2012,
said on his messaging app channel that the referendums are important to protect
their residents and would “completely change” Russia’s future trajectory.
“After they
are held and the new territories are taken into Russia’s fold, a geopolitical
transformation of the world will become irreversible,” Medvedev said.
“An
encroachment on the territory of Russia is a crime that would warrant any means
of self-defense,” he said, adding that Russia would enshrine the new
territories in its constitution so no future Russian leader could hand them
back.
“That is why
they fear those referendums so much in Kyiv and in the West,” Medvedev said.
“That is why they must be held.”
Ukrainian
analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the independent Penta Center think-tank in
Kyiv, said the Kremlin hopes the votes and the possibility of military
escalation will raise the pressure from Western governments for Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to start talks with Moscow.
The move
“reflects the weakness, not the strength of the Kremlin, which is struggling to
find levers to influence the situation that has increasingly spun out of its control,”
he said.
The
recapturing of territory, most notably in the northeastern Kharkiv region, has
strengthened Ukraine’s arguments that its troops could deliver more stinging
defeats to Russia with additional armament deliveries.
More heavy
weaponry is on its way, with Slovenia promising 28 tanks and Germany pledging
four additional self-propelled howitzers. More aid also is expected from
Britain, already one of Ukraine’s biggest military backers after the U.S.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss is expected to promise that in 2023, her
government will “match or exceed” the 2.3 billion pounds ($2.7 billion) in
military aid given to Ukraine this year.
The
swiftness of the Ukrainian counteroffensive also saw Russian forces abandon
armored vehicles and other weapons as they beat hasty retreats. Ukrainian forces
are recycling the captured weaponry back into battle. A Washington-based think
tank, The Institute for the Study of War, said abandoned Russian T-72 tanks are
being used by Ukrainian forces seeking to push into Russian-occupied Luhansk.
In the
counteroffensive’s wake, Ukrainian officials found hundreds of graves near the
once-occupied city of Izium. Yevhenii Yenin, a deputy minister in Ukraine’s
Internal Affairs Ministry, told a national telecast that officials found many
bodies “with signs of violent death.”
“These are
broken ribs and broken heads, men with bound hands, broken jaws and severed
genitalia,” he said.
Meanwhile,
Ukraine’s southern military command said its troops sank a Russian barge
carrying troops and weapons across the Dnieper River near the Russian-occupied
city of Nova Kakhovka. It offered no other details on the attack in the
Russian-occupied Kherson region, which has been a major target in the Ukrainian
counteroffensive.
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