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Russian Proxies in Ukraine Push Moscow to Annex Occupied Regions


KYIV, Ukraine – In a show of force aimed at giving Moscow the land grab of legitimacy, authorized Russian officials in occupied Ukraine’s regions have called on President Vladimir V. Putin to wax Enter regions on Wednesday.

The merger requests have an atmosphere of order and formality in contrast to the chaos Russia’s leaders are facing on the battlefield, where they continue to suffer losses, and at home, where goods Tens of thousands of Russians are fleeing the country to avoid a conscription.

The requests from Russian proxies follow spoof referendums that ended on Tuesday in four regions in Ukraine and, to no surprise, are intended to stamp voter approval of accession. Russia. Witnesses said many ballots were cast at gunpoint.

A resident of the town of Berislav, in the Kherson region, scoffed at the idea of ​​wanting to join Russia.

“The first time they came to our town, they beat me up and took both my cars,” the man, Pavlo, said of the Russian soldiers. “And now they’re threatening that if I don’t vote, they’ll evict me and my family from our apartment.”

Because of the threats, Pavlo – who insists his surname is not made public for fear of reprisals – said he voted in favor of joining Russia.

The merger push comes as the European Union moves to impose new sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for its latest actions. The draft measures include capping oil prices, restricting trade and blacklisting certain individuals responsible for the referendums.

“Last week, Russia escalated its invasion of Ukraine to a whole new level,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the bloc’s top official. “We are determined to make the Kremlin pay the price for further escalation.”

On February 24, Russian forces overran the border and began dumping waste into Ukrainian cities. But when it comes to mergers, Russian officials seem to want at least a layer of legitimacy protection — even as most of the world sternly condemns the referendums as illegal.

Under Russia’s 1993 Constitution, Moscow cannot annex areas of a neighboring state without consent. And so the ongoing moves aim to tick the checkboxes under Russian law governing how land is claimed in a neighboring country.

In fact, much of the territory Russia is claiming is not under its control, and the Ukrainian military is going even further.

On Wednesday, Ukraine continued to recapture many towns and villages in the east while attacking Russian positions in the south. Destroyed Russian tanks and bodies of Russian soldiers litter the roadside outside the village of Oskil as Ukrainian troops advance towards the strategically important city of Lyman.

The destruction has demonstrated widespread challenges and Russian forces are facing heavy losses as they try to defend against multiple Ukrainian attacks. Russia’s heavy losses have prompted Putin to take the politically risky step of ordering the nation the first mass movement since World War II.

But at least 200,000 Russians have left the country since Putin announced the partial military deployment, according to figures provided by Russia’s neighbors.

Amid the defeats on the battlefield, Russian proxies in Ukraine, with the referendum results in their hands, quickly demanded that Moscow annex the territories to Russia.

In two of the four voting provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk to the east, Moscow established client states eight years ago. It was the leaders of those entities, whose legitimacy was not recognized by many in the world, that made the merger requests.

Denis Pushilin, leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said he would be leaving for Moscow with a document signed by election commission members showing the results for use in the merger process, according to Tass, Russian news agency.

The leader of the Luhansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, is also said to be on his way to Moscow, and he posted a video online asking Putin to accept the election results he called.

In two other countries, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson to the south, puppet leaders declared independence from Ukraine in what they said was the first step toward integration into Russia.

In Kherson, Volodymyr Saldo, the leader occupied by the Russian Army last spring, called on Putin on Telegram, the messaging app, to accept the region as part of Russia.

If Russia follows suit template coined upon annexing the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, the Kremlin is expected to portray local leaders installed by the Russian military as independent representatives of Ukrainians there, and a staged process will follow.

The aim this time seems to be to declare parts of Ukraine as Russian territory and then assert that the Ukrainian Army is attacking Russia. The annexation would also provide an excuse to bring Ukrainians into the occupied areas and force them to fight other Ukrainians.

By Wednesday night, the process had progressed, Tass reported. The news agency reported that the leaders of Russia-installed Donetsk and Luhansk sent Putin a formal request for a merger with Russia.

Putin could at any stage pause the process, possibly leaving the prospect of negotiations open with the threat of annexation clearly on the table. If he fails to do so, the next step will be to submit an appeal from Russia’s proxies for approval by both chambers of the Russian Parliament. There will be some surprises: Both chambers are composed entirely of members loyal to Mr. Putin.

So far, Putin has remained tight-lipped about his plans. His spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said the Russian leader traveled from the Black Sea resort of Sochi to Moscow on Wednesday but plans to make no public comment on the referendum .

Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed Moscow’s moves as political theater and said they remain determined to push Russian forces back to Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.

“No criminal act by Russia will change anything for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a speech to the nation.

European officials also scorned Russian-drafted votes to annex parts of Ukraine.

“The EU does not and will never recognize this illegal ‘referendum’ and their falsified results, nor any decision made on the basis of this result, and calls on all members of the United Nations do the same,” the bloc said in a statement statement Wednesday.

In the two weeks since Ukraine ousted Russia from towns and cities across the northeastern region of Kharkiv, its forces have been gradually advancing further south, breaking through Russian defenses on the river. Oskil.

British military intelligence on Wednesday said Ukrainian units were making “slow advances on at least two axes to the east from the Oskil and Seversky Donets rivers”.

But even in retreat, Russian forces continued to launch an intense barrage of artillery and rockets at towns and cities recently liberated from occupation in the Kharkiv region.

A Russian cruise missile crashed into residential and commercial buildings in the city Pervomaysk Late on Monday, eight people were killed, including a 15-year-old girl, according to Ukrainian officials.

Andrew E. Kramer and Marc Santora reported from Kyiv, Ukraine and Eric Nagourneyfrom New York. Nicole Tung contribution reports from Oskil, Ukraine, Anna Lukinovafrom Kyiv and Monika Proncczuk from Brussels.



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