The separatist leaders of four Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine say they are planning to hold referendums this week for the territories to become part of Russia as Moscow loses ground in the war it launched. The votes will be held in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions. The announcement of the balloting starting Friday came after a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that they were needed. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also said that folding Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine into Russia itself would make their redrawn frontiers “irreversible” and enable Moscow to use “any means” to defend them.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan slammed the planned votes.
In Donetsk, part of Ukraine's wider Donbas region that has been gripped by rebel fighting since 2014 and which Putin has set as a primary objective of the invasion, separatist leader Denis Pushilin said the vote will “restore historic justice" to the territory's “long-suffering people." Pressure inside Russia for votes and from Moscow-backed leaders in Ukrainian regions that Moscow controls increased after a Ukrainian counteroffensive — bolstered by Western-supplied weaponry — that has recaptured large areas.
He also repeated his long-held position that the Crimean Peninsula should be returned to Ukraine. Turkey has strong ethnic ties to Crimean Tatars. “Since 2014, we have been talking to my dear friend Putin about this, and this is what we have requested from him,” he said. “After they are held and the new territories are taken into Russia’s fold, a geopolitical transformation of the world will become irreversible," Medvedev said.
The move “reflects the weakness, not the strength of the Kremlin, which is struggling to find levers to influence the situation that has increasingly spun out of its control,” he said.
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