Kyiv, Ukraine — Much of the population of the occupied territories has fled. And many towns ostensibly have mail-in or electronic ballots despite lacking postal services or even electricity.
But another aspect of what Moscow agents refer to Russia’s joining as a referendum particularly calls into question the process: voting in front of armed soldiers, according to witnesses and Ukrainian officials. do.
“The so-called referendum is like an opinion poll under the muzzle of a machine gun,” Serhei Khaydai, the governor of Ukraine for the eastern Luhansk region, wrote on Telegram on Saturday.
Residents describe the intimidating scene. balaclava that covers the face A companion poll worker who goes from house to house with a ballot. Soldiers are waiting for their ballots to be filled out and have little doubt as to which boxes they expect to be checked.
“They came with guns, so how can the vote be voluntary?” Natalia, from the village of Kherson, said she wanted to be identified only by her first name for security reasons. said in a telephone interview on Saturday.
Villagers were greeted by a small delegation of two soldiers and three women with ballot boxes, she said.
“Some people put ballots in boxes,” Natalia said. “I don’t know what happened to the box after that.”
When Natalia asked the soldiers why they were there, they replied that they were protecting the women.
“I asked, ‘What are you so afraid of that you need to be on your guard?'” Natalia said. “They were silent.”
Russian proxies have called for referendums in four Ukrainian regions (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhka and Kherson) after a surprise counterattack earlier this month forced Ukrainian forces to expel Russian troops from most of Kharkov’s fifth quarter. I hurriedly called.
Ukrainian and Western officials flatly said they would ignore the result What they consider to be a “fake” referendum. The aim of President Vladimir V. Putin is to finally annex these parts of Ukraine, as Russia did in Crimea in 2014, and if Ukraine does so on land that the Kremlin considers to be Russian land. They believe that continuing military action against them threatens a harsh response.
Another dubious goal is to enable Ukrainians in the occupied territories to be recruited into the Russian army, to fight against their own people in wars.
The Ukrainian military command said in a statement on Saturday that draft notices had already been distributed in the Zaporizhka and Kherson regions of southern Ukraine.
Many of the occupied territories where referendums are being held are either cut off from internet or mobile phone coverage, or are areas of active military combat, prohibiting independent evaluation of ballot distribution and counting. We make it possible.Russia’s claims attended by foreign observers, However, they do not appear to be from an internationally recognized institution.
“Election commissions with armed soldiers continue to roam the area, looking for voters,” said Yury Sobolevsky, the first deputy chairman of the Kherson Regional Council, at polling stations going door-to-door with ballots. I wrote about workers. He said the polling place was empty.
Posted online on Saturday by Dmitro Orlyov, the mayor of the exiled Ukrainian city of Enerkhodar, two surveillance videos from the stairwell of an apartment building in the Zaporizhka region show a soldier clutching a gun and a clear plastic box of ballots. It was shown walking with a woman holding a
“They are entering the building with weapons,” Orlyov said in a telephone interview. He said residents told stories of outright intimidation by soldiers. “They make a lot of noise, they ring the bell, they hand people ballots and they point rifles where they want to be marked.”
Zaporiska Region Governor Oleksandr Starov said on Saturday that about three-quarters of the population had fled the region due to the fighting, undermining claims of just consequences.
Starck also emphasized the influence of armed Russian soldiers in controlling the vote.
“It’s not hard to see what marks people put under the muzzle of an automatic rifle,” he wrote in Telegram.