The move, which seriously escalates Moscow’s conflict with the West, comes after Russia suffered a battlefield reversal in northeastern Ukraine and as Putin considers his next steps in a nearly seven-month-old conflict that has caused the most serious East-West rift from 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Russian-backed self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) and neighboring Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said the planned referendums would be held from September 23 to 27. In a social media post addressed to Putin, the head of the DPR Denis Pushilin wrote: “I ask you, as soon as possible, in case of a positive decision in the referendum – which we have no doubt about – to consider the DPR becoming part of of Russia”.
Vote in possessions
Earlier on Tuesday, Russian-settled officials in the southern Kherson region, where Moscow’s forces control about 95 percent of the territory, said they had also decided to hold a referendum. Pro-Russian authorities in part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region were expected to follow suit. Ukraine and the United States have said such referendums would be an illegal sham and have made clear that it and many other countries will not recognize the results. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president who is currently the vice-chairman of the country’s security council, suggested before the announcements that the outcome of such votes would be irreversible and give Moscow — which has the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons — carte blanche to defend what it would legally consider its own territory. “Trespassing on Russian territory is a crime that allows you to use all self-defense forces,” Medvedev said in a Telegram post. That is why these referendums are so feared in Kyiv and in the West.” Ukrainian soldiers drive over a self-propelled artillery in the newly recaptured Dolyna district, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on September 14. (Evgeniy Maloletka/The Associated Press) No future Russian leader will be able to constitutionally overturn their outcome, he added. Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said his parliament would support the two regions joining Russia if they voted for it. Washington and the West have so far been careful not to supply Ukraine with weapons that could be used to bomb Russian territory, and Medvedev’s interpretation of what de facto annexation would legally mean from Moscow’s point of view sounded like a future warning for the West. “They [the referendums] it would completely change Russia’s development vehicle for decades. And not only of our country. The geopolitical transformation of the world would be irreversible when the new territories are incorporated into Russia,” he wrote. It is unclear how the referendums will be held, given that Russian and Russian-backed forces control only about 60 percent of the Donetsk region, while Ukrainian forces are trying to retake Luhansk. Pro-Russian officials have previously said the referendums could be held electronically. The move will come eight years after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.
