The authorities installed by Moscow in four regions of Ukraine announced on Tuesday the urgent holding from September 23 to 27 of “referendums” of annexation by Russia, in the midst of a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
The Ukrainian presidency has sworn to “liquidate” the Russian threat.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with foreign diplomats and arms industry officials during the day, meaning he would stay the course.
Commentators raised the specter of a nuclear war if Russia annexed these territories and if the Kremlin then considered that the war was taking place on its soil.
The separatist powers of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions announced these votes, as did the Russian occupation authorities of Kherson and Zaporijjia (south). These elections, scheduled for this week, will take place as Ukraine enters its 8th month of war.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that “these fictitious referendums are not acceptable” while NATO denounced a “new Russian escalation”.
The United States has denounced “sham” elections.
French President Emmanuel Macron castigated him before the United Nations General Assembly “a return to the age of imperialism and colonies”, shortly after calling the announced polls a “travesty”.
Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib also reacted. “The so-called ‘referendums’ do not deceive anyone. They are part of a pattern aimed at reinforcing aggression and illegal occupation by Russia. The scenario is known in advance. We will continue to support territorial integrity of Ukraine”, she said via Twitter.
Preparations for several months
These votes, on the model of the one which formalized the annexation of the Crimean peninsula (south) by Russia in 2014, denounced by kyiv and the West, have been the subject of preparations for several months.
The timetable seems to have accelerated with the Ukrainian counter-offensive which forced the Russian army to retreat to the northeast of the country. Russian officials had previously mentioned the date of November 4, the day of Russian national unity.
Separatist leaders in Luhansk were the first to announce that the poll would take place this week, over four days starting on Friday.
They were followed by the separatist leader of Donetsk and the occupation leaders of Kherson and Zaporizhia. All called on Mr. Putin to recognize the results of the vote.
“Blackmail” and Russian reverses
Ukraine warned on Tuesday that the Russian threat would be “liquidated”, the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Andriï Iermak, denouncing a Russian “blackmail” motivated by “the fear of defeat”.
The head of diplomacy Dmytro Kouleba for his part assured that Ukraine was going “continue to liberate his land”.
The announcements come after Russian setbacks in early September, with Moscow’s army withdrawing from the Kharkiv region in the face of pressure from kyiv forces, strong in supplies of Western weapons and equipment.
Russian diplomacy has also told the French ambassador in Moscow that the continuation of arms deliveries to Ukraine was “unacceptable”.
The Ukrainian army is also leading a counter-offensive on the Kherson region in the south and another in the direction of the Lugansk region, which Moscow had conquered in its entirety in the spring at the cost of months of deadly fighting.
kyiv thus hopes to retake the village of Bilogorivka, the conquest of which had cost Russia dearly in May, its forces having been decimated while trying to cross the Siverskiï Donets river there. The images of destroyed tanks had gone around the world.
Twenty kilometers away, from Siversk, Ukrainian artillery bombarded Russian positions.
“It hits very hard”, told AFP Natalia, grocer of this city, “in the morning we come out of the cellars, we see the burnt houses”.
In the village, exhausted Ukrainian artillerymen rest on their self-propelled gun, covered by a tree. “We fired all night, we’re going to leave to reload (in ammunition, editor’s note) and come back afterwards”, one of them said.
Nuclear weapon
Mr. Putin, meeting on Tuesday with arms manufacturers and security officials, called for “accelerating production capacities” to “as soon as possible to deliver the necessary armaments” to his army.
Receiving the credentials of new ambassadors, he insisted on the merits of his “sovereign” foreign policy.
At the same time, the lower house of the Russian Parliament passed a text considerably toughening the prison sentences incurred by soldiers who surrender to the enemy, desert or commit looting.
On Tuesday morning, former President Dmitry Medvedev and current number two of the Russian Security Council had ruled that the “referendums” of annexation would restore “historic justice”, the Kremlin considering Ukraine as historically Russian.
“Encroaching on the territory of Russia is a crime and if committed, it allows you to use all forces in self-defense,” he threatened.
For independent Russian analyst Tatiana Stanovaya, the holding of these votes means that Putin wants to arrogate “the right to use atomic weapons to defend Russian territory”.
Margarita Simonian, the boss of the Russian television channel RT, has judged that this week will be either “the antechamber of our imminent victory” either the one “of nuclear war”.