Vladimir Putin is set to announce the annexation of four areas of Ukraine today following the conclusion of sham referendums.
The disputed votes were held in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.
Both the Ukrainian government and the West has denounced the ballots as illegal and rigged, with the United Nations set to meet later today to make it clear it will not formally recognise their enforced status.
The Russian president will make a speech declaring the areas part of Russia on a stage which has already been set up in Moscow’s Red Square.
Volodymyr Zelensky called an emergency meeting of the National Security and Defence Council for Friday in response to the Russian move.
The strategy mirrors Russia’s seizure of Crime in 2014, which also followed a discredited referendum and has never been recognised by the vast majority of the international community.
As with the Black Sea peninsula, Russia’s two houses of parliament will formally ratify the annexation treaties next week.
No independent monitoring of the referendum took place and armed police have used intimidation to solicit votes at gunpoint.
Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky, whose country currently holds the European Union presidency said: ‘It’s absolutely unacceptable.
‘We reject such one-sided annexation based on a fully falsified process with no legitimacy.’
EU member states are considering an eighth round of measures, including sanctions on anyone involved in the votes, and the US is expected to follow suit.
German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday people in occupied regions of Ukraine had been taken from their homes and workplaces by threat and sometimes at gunpoint.
She added: ‘This is the opposite of free and fair elections.
‘And this is the opposite of peace. It’s dictated peace. As long as this Russian diktat prevails in the occupied territories of Ukraine, no citizen is safe. No citizen is free.’
With Ukraine’s army retaking territory in the east, Mr Putin has called up 300,000 reservists in order to bolster his ailing army.
Tens of thousands of men have also fled from the country and the Russian president has continued to sabre rattle over the use of nuclear weapons.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
For more stories like this, check our news page.
Source: Read Full Article
