Four Moscow-controlled regions in Ukraine will hold votes this week, a step the Kremlin has so far resisted and which Western powers and Kyiv immediately denounced as a sham. The Russian Duma also passed a law on Tuesday to increase penalties for desertion and draft evasion in the event of conscription, another sign of Moscow’s tough stance. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, decried the referendums as “a further escalation” of the war. “The mock referendums have no legitimacy and do not change the nature of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” he said. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has stood back since losing thousands of square kilometers of territory to Ukrainian forces this month, raising clamor from pro-war hawks for full annexation and mobilization. The referendums will be held between September 23 and 27 and will be held in two territories — the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics — that have been ruled by Russian-backed strongmen since they broke away from Kyiv in 2014. Votes will also be held in Kherson and parts of Zaporizhzhia province, two southern regions seized by Russian forces when they invaded Ukraine this year and where Moscow’s power remains fragile. The votes followed Crimea’s 2014 referendum on joining Russia, which was widely condemned internationally. Western analysts have suggested that annexing further territory could allow Moscow to claim that providing NATO arms to Ukraine amounted to an attack on Russia itself. “Trespassing on Russian territory is a crime that allows you to use all self-defense forces,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said. That is why these referendums are so feared in Kyiv and in the West. He added that the votes were a “restoration of historical justice” and “will completely change the direction of Russia’s development for decades.” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government, called on the international community to respond to the plans by “increasing arms assistance and imposing new economic sectoral sanctions against Russia.” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington would “unequivocally” reject further Russian attempts to annex occupied areas of Ukraine. “We will never recognize this territory as anything other than part of Ukraine,” he added. Sullivan said the planned referendums, along with reports that Russia might stage a mass mobilization, were signs of Russian weakness. “It’s the act of a country that has suffered setbacks — militarily, diplomatically,” he said. A mural in Moscow in support of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine © Maxim Shipenkov/EPA/Shutterstock The law passed by the Russian Duma on Tuesday would criminalize desertion and other acts “during a period of martial law, armed conflict or mobilization.” So far, Russia has called its seven-month invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation” and not a war. It has used contract soldiers and mercenaries, without formally deploying a standing army or mobilizing the wider population for war. The new legislation enables the authorities to punish acts such as desertion either in times of “war” or “conscription”, rather than only after a clear declaration of war. Avoiding conscription and desertion will now attract a prison sentence of five to ten years. The drafters of the bill said that such changes to the criminal code do not amount to mobilization itself. “The mobilization has not been announced,” the state-run Interfax news agency quoted an official as saying. “The Duma has just considered and adopted in their final form several changes to the criminal code at breakneck speed,” wrote high-profile lawyer Ivan Pavlov, who has previously defended Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. “Most likely, there will be a big announcement soon. . .[and]we will be able to call the war a war.” Additional reporting by Felicia Schwartz in New York
