Yasuyoshi Chiba | Afp | Getty Images Ukrainian officials have rejected plans by the country’s Russian-held regions to hold referendums on joining the Russian Federation, saying the move is “doomed to fail”, while analysts see the votes as an escalation by Moscow as Kiev’s counteroffensive continues. Russia’s proxy leaders and officials based in the occupied parts of the country made a series of announcements on Tuesday, calling for an immediate vote on joining Russia. The announcements came ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order on Wednesday for a “partial mobilization” that included calling up military reserves to active duty and increasing government funding for arms production. The referendums, due to be held next weekend, will be held in two self-proclaimed “democracies” in Donetsk and Luhansk in the eastern Donbass region as well as occupied parts of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. The votes – the results of which are widely expected to be rigged and favor becoming part of Russia – are widely seen as a way for Russia to annex more parts of Ukraine and be able to justify “defending” what it could then claim it was “Russian territory”, even though most of the international community would not recognize the legitimacy of the vote or the results. Needless to say, Russia’s recent efforts to annex more parts of Ukraine and try to lend legitimacy to such an act by holding referendums to do so have been met with international condemnation, starting with Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the “noisy news” and announcements about the referendums, saying Ukraine had heard it all before. “Today there is quite noisy news from Russia. And there are many questions about it. But what actually happened? What was heard that we have not heard before,” he said in his nightly speech, while Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on any referendums a “fake” that would not stop Ukraine from its goal of liberating its territories. Echoing Kuleba’s position, Yuri Shak, an adviser to Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, told CNBC that such “fake” votes are “doomed to fail” for several reasons. “This is the desperate face-saving effort they are trying to use to compensate for the humiliation they suffered on the battlefield as a result of the counterattack by the Ukrainian army, both in the Kharkiv region and in Kherson,” he said. CNBC Tuesday. “The second point is that no matter what they do, it will not stop the Ukrainian army and this will not be recognized by any member of the international community.” “The third, very important point is that the local populations in the temporarily occupied territories — and we see this now as we occupy these territories — do not support the occupiers. They do not support the aggressor. Therefore, these fake referendums are doomed to fail, whichever way you look at it,” he said.
Why are votes held?
As the votes were announced in parallel on Tuesday, analysts questioned whether Moscow could announce a mobilization of the Russian people, firmly putting Russians on a war footing and opening the door to the potential recruitment of combat-age Russian men to be sent. to Ukraine. That speculation was confirmed on Wednesday as Putin announced a partial mobilization of the Russian nation, while again blaming the West for the war in Ukraine and saying Russia has “many weapons to respond” to threats from the West. Putin’s latest move came as talk among politicians and pro-Putin commentators about the mobilization grew louder in recent weeks as pressure intensified on the Kremlin to throw more weight (both personnel and weapons) behind the “special military operation » in Ukraine, especially after Kiev’s successes in a lightning counterattack in the northeast in the Kharkiv region and south of the country in Kherson. The counterattack in Kharkiv was particularly successful, with Ukrainian forces driving almost all Russian troops out of the area. in Kherson, the situation is more complicated as Russian forces are more deeply entrenched in and around the port city and the wider region, and in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 and where it similarly held a sham referendum to try to legalize its annexation. Putin said on Wednesday that Russia supported the referendums and said the decision to partially mobilize was “fully sufficient for the threats we face, that is, to protect our homeland, its sovereignty and territorial integrity, to ensure security of the people and our people in the liberated territories”. The upcoming votes would allow the Kremlin to claim, albeit falsely, that it was “defending” its territory and its citizens, and this will require more manpower. Ukraine’s Western allies have already confirmed that the results of any votes would be considered illegitimate. The EU said any results could not be considered “the free expression of the will of the people” in those regions, while US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken commented on Tuesday that “the sham referendums, the possible mobilization of additional forces is not a sign On the contrary, it is a sign of weakness, it is a sign of Russian failure.” Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to President Joe Biden, called the referendums an affront to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. He said Biden, in his address Wednesday to the United Nations General Assembly, would rebuke Russia for its war against Ukraine.
More fighting power
The latest UK Ministry of Defense intelligence update, released on Wednesday morning, said the urgency behind such votes was likely due to Russian fears “of an imminent Ukrainian attack [on occupied areas] and an expectation of greater security after officially becoming part of Russia.” However, the ministry noted that Russian forces in Ukraine continue to face personnel shortages and that a vote in the Russian Duma on Tuesday to strengthen Russia’s criminal code on military service — including increasing the penalty for desertion and other “crimes committed in conditions of mobilization, martial law, armed conflict and hostilities’ — was probably intended to limit the number of refusals to fight and was designed to alleviate some of the direct ‘pressures’ on personnel. “The Russian political and military leadership has faced considerable pressure over the past two weeks. These new measures are very likely to be pushed through public criticism and mark a further development in Russia’s strategy,” the ministry said. “Putin is accepting greater political risk by undermining the fiction that Russia is neither at war nor in national crisis in hopes of generating more combat power,” the ministry said.
