Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to announce the accession of occupied regions of Ukraine to the Russian Federation during his address to parliament on September 30, the British Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday.
Annexation polls organised by Kremlin-installed authorities in four regions of Ukraine mostly controlled by Russian forces were due to close Tuesday. Kyiv and its allies have denounced the votes as a sham and said the West would never recognise the results of the ballots.
“Russia’s leaders almost certainly hope that any accession announcement will be seen as a vindication of the special military operation and will consolidate patriotic support for the conflict,” it said.
Nearly four million people from the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, are voting in referendums on joining Russia. Reports suggest that people are being forced to take part in the voting that began on Friday, with election officials visiting houses accompanied by armed guards.
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Kremlin aims to use the votes to legitimise its invasion aims. Ukraine’s attempts to regain these regions can be portrayed by Moscow as an attack on its sovereign territory.
Russian forces in Ukraine this month have suffered serious setbacks, both in the east and south of the country. Experts say this is the reason why Putin rushed ahead with the vote to cement Moscow’s authority there.
Putin said Russia would use any and all available means to defend its territory, implying that after the four regions were annexed, Moscow could deploy strategic nuclear weapons to repulse Ukrainian attempts to take back the territory.
Moscow has even called up 300,000 reservists, leading to protests in Russia with several fleeing the country to escape mobilisation.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said the polls were a “sham” and little more than a “false pretext to try to annex parts of Ukraine by force”. Even Moscow’s closest ally since the start of the invasion, Beijing, said after the votes were announced that both Russia and Ukraine should respect territorial integrity in the war.
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Provisional results are expected around Tuesday evening, Kremlin-backed leaders in the regions have said. Lawmakers would then be expected to vote to formally annex the four territories, which would need Putin’s signature to be enacted.
The so-called referendums follow a pattern that Moscow utilised in 2014 to annex the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in the wake of national street demonstrations that saw the country’s Kremlin-friendly president ousted.
(With inputs from agencies)
