- Paul Kirby
- BBC correspondent
5 hours ago
image source,Getty Images
Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to support annexation achieved in a so-called referendum, as was done with Crimea in 2014.
Russian-backed local officials in four Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine have announced that they will hold a self-created referendum to join Russia.
This seems to be a repeat of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but this time is different because four regions are at war, and Russia did not fire a single shot when it annexed Crimea.
what happened? Why?
Nearly seven months following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin is now at a disadvantage. The Ukrainian counteroffensive has retaken many occupied territories.
Putin is under pressure from hardliners to respond, and backing a Crimean-style referendum would be a response to his critics. The Russian media has published opinion polls claiming broad support for the plan to join Russia, but without proper monitoring and acceptance, these polls are as bogus as votes in the middle of a war.
Just as his 2014 Crimea referendum was dismissed as false by the international community, so too have the leaders of France and Germany to blame.
But President Putin may feel that declaring the occupied territory as Russian territory might change the course of the war because it would allow him to demand that Ukraine’s Western backers stop supplying arms. The U.S. Himars multiple rocket system hit Russian forces particularly hard.
Russia’s hope, according to Russian analyst Alexander Baunov, is that the West will hold back at the thought of going to war in what Russia considers territory.
Where is the falsity of these votes?
During the five days of September 23-27, four regions of Ukraine that are partially or almost completely occupied by Russia will hold self-created referendums, where people will vote in person or remotely.
The vote was regarding joining the Russian Federation, and Vladimir Saldo, Russia’s installed leader in the southern Kherson region, said that joining Russia would “guarantee the security of our territory and restore historical justice”.
The region’s capital, Kherson, is not a safe place right now, as Russian soldiers are struggling to fend off a massive Ukrainian counteroffensive. The Central Administration Building was hit by a barrage of missiles just last week. A safe vote is impossible.
Then there is the capital of Zaporozhye Oblast, which is still in Ukrainian hands, so any vote to annex the region doesn’t make much sense.
Only 60 percent of Donetsk in the east is occupied by Russia and is largely at the center of the conflict; meanwhile, Russia controls much of Luhansk in the northeast, but is already losing ground.
Much of the war’s population has fled the fighting. The head of Russia’s acting authority in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, ordered a mass evacuation days before the invasion.
Russia’s acting leaders may have wanted to hold a referendum for months, but the decision, made suddenly three days early, looked a bit desperate.
In the words of French President Emmanuel Macron: “Russia started this war, invaded this region, bombed people, forced people to flee, and now they say it’s these regions that are going to organize a referendum.”
“We are seeing that the local population is all in favour of returning to Ukraine, and that’s why there is so much guerrilla resistance in these strips, so these referendums are doomed,” Yuriy Sak, adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister, told Archyde.com. BBC said.
What happens following annexation?
Everything is very different from 2014. Donetsk’s acting leader has called on Putin to respond to a positive decision following September 27 — “we have no doubts regarding it” — to consider making it part of Russia.
The Russian president will most likely decide to annex all four regions, but the actual situation will change very little as the Ukrainian counteroffensive continues.
Russia is likely to demand that NATO countries stop supplying Ukraine with weapons, but none of those countries will endorse these votes. As the Institute for the Study of War points out, Ukraine has struck Russian military targets in Crimea, and Russia has not fought back.
Russian military mobilization
Until now, the Russian president has not declared war head-on, but labelled the war as a “special military operation”. This avoids the mobilization that has long been suggested he may be regarding to take. (By Wednesday, Putin had formally ordered a partial mobilization of Russia.)
As the four regions announced their respective sham votes, Russia’s lower house of parliament is stepping up efforts to amend a law to introduce the concepts of “mobilization” and “wartime” in criminal law — for those who evade military service, surrender or go AWOL Implement severe punishment.
Mobilization is already on the table.
Putin has signaled to his remaining allies that he is trying to end the war. The Turkish president has said Putin even told him he was trying to end the fighting as soon as possible.
But if that doesn’t work out, Alexander Banov believes that Putin will be able to pass the buck to someone else and turn his invasion of Ukraine into a war of defense. Moscow would then want to make it legal for Russian civilians to take part in the fighting, and take it a step further.
Are there nuclear risks?
Russian propagandists regularly threaten to use the country’s nuclear weapons, especially now that their armed forces are losing ground in Ukraine. They also describe the Ukrainian operation as a proxy war for NATO, even as Western leaders have been extremely careful to avoid a head-on conflict.
Dmitry Medvedev, vice-president of the Russian Federation Security Council, issued a near-naked threat on Tuesday that any violation of Russian territory would be met with “full-scale armed self-defense” following the annexation.
Russian TV propagandist Margarita Simonyan went a step further, saying that an attack on Russian territory would turn into “a full-scale war between Ukraine and NATO and Russia, leaving Russia free” .
British Conservative MP Bob Seely (Bob Seely), who has just visited Kyiv, believes that the nuclear threat is largely aimed at intimidating the West to stop arms supplies to Ukraine.
But he warned that such a threat risks self-fulfillment, giving Russia a reason to use strategic nuclear weapons “to a degree that they themselves think it’s ultimately a reasonable response, no matter how much we don’t believe it is.”
