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Ukraine voters OK annexation, Russians claim

Will be obligated to defend the territories, Moscow says

COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS

KYIV, Ukraine — The Kremlin paved the way Tuesday to annex more of Ukraine and escalate the war by claiming that residents of a large swath overwhelmingly supported joining with Russia in stage-managed referendums the U.S. and its Western allies have dismissed as illegitimate.

Pro-Moscow officials said all four occupied regions of Ukraine voted to join Russia.

According to Russia-installed election officials, 93% of the ballots cast in the Zaporizhzhia region supported annexation, as did 87% in the Kherson region, 98% in the Luhansk region and 99% in Donetsk. Possibly explaining the lower favorable vote in Kherson is that Russian authorities there have faced a strong Ukrainian underground resistance movement whose members have killed Moscow-appointed officials and threatened those who considered voting.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the U.N. Security Council by video from Kyiv that Russia’s attempts to annex Ukrainian territory will mean “there is nothing to talk about with this president of Russia.”

He added that “any annexation in the modern world is a crime, a crime against all states that consider the inviolability of border to be vital for themselves.”

The preordained outcome sets the stage for a dangerous new phase in Russia’s seven-month war, with the Kremlin threatening to throw more troops into the battle and potentially use nuclear weapons.

The referendums asking residents whether they wanted the four occupied southern and eastern Ukraine regions to be incorporated into Russia began Friday, often with armed officials going

door-to-door collecting votes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected Friday to address Russia’s parliament about the referendums. Valentina Matviyenko, who chairs the body’s upper house, said lawmakers could consider annexation legislation on Oct. 4.

After the balloting, “the situation will radically change from the legal viewpoint, from the point of view of international law, with all the corresponding consequences for protection of those areas and ensuring their security,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.

Many Western leaders have called the referendum a sham, and the U.N. Security Council met Tuesday in New York to discuss the voting, with the U.S. and Albania planning to introduce a resolution that says the results will never be accepted and that the four regions remain part of Ukraine. Russia is certain to veto the resolution.

The balloting is aimed at buttressing Moscow’s exposed military and political positions.

The referendums follow a familiar Kremlin playbook for territorial expansion and more aggressive military action.

In 2014, Russian authorities held a similar referendum on Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, under the close watch of Russian troops. Based on the voting, Russia annexed Crimea.

Putin cited the defense of Russians living in Ukraine’s eastern regions, their supposed desires to join with Russia, and an existential security threat to Russia as a pretext for his Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

NUCLEAR SABER-RATTLING

Meanwhile, Russia ramped up warnings that it could deploy nuclear weapons to defend its territory, including newly acquired land.

Putin has been talking up Moscow’s nuclear option since Ukrainians launched a counteroffensive that reclaimed territory and has increasingly cornered his forces. A top Putin aide ratcheted up the nuclear rhetoric Tuesday.

“Let’s imagine that Russia is forced to use the most powerful weapon against the Ukrainian regime that has committed a large-scale act of aggression, which is dangerous for the very existence of our state,” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of the Russian Security Council that Putin chairs, wrote on his messaging app channel. “I believe that NATO will steer clear from direct meddling in the conflict.”

The United States has dismissed the Kremlin’s nuclear talk as a scare tactic.

The referendums asked residents whether they want the areas to be incorporated into Russia, and the Kremlin has portrayed them as free and fair, reflective of the people’s desire for self-determination.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko, who left the port city after the Russians seized it after a monthslong siege, said only about 20% of the 100,000 estimated remaining residents cast ballots in the Donetsk referendum. Mariupol’s pre-war population was 541,000.

“A man toting an assault rifle comes to your home and asks you to vote, so what can people do?” Boychenko asked during a news conference, explaining how people were coerced into voting.

Western allies sided firmly with Ukraine, dismissing the referendum votes as a meaningless sham.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the ballots were “a desperate move” by Putin. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said while visiting Kyiv on Tuesday that France was determined “to support Ukraine and its sovereignty and territorial integrity” and described the ballots as “mock referendums.”

In other developments, Ukrainian authorities reported more success in their counteroffensive to reclaim territory in some of the very regions where Russia is staging the referendums to consolidate its grip.

Ukrainian troops claimed to continue their push beyond the Oskil River in the country’s east, pressing farther into the Donbas.

A video on social media Tuesday showed Ukrainian soldiers entering the village of Koroviy Yar, about 9 miles from the river.

Ukraine’s military intelligence said the country’s forces continued to force Russian troops out of the northeastern Kharkiv region and claimed to recapture the major railway junction of Kupyansk-Vuzlovyi.

The war’s human toll was also reflected in a U.N. human-rights monitoring mission’s first comprehensive look at violations and abuses Russia and Ukraine committed between Feb. 1 and July 31, the first five months of Russia’s invasion.

Matilda Bogner, the mission’s chief, said Ukrainian prisoners of war appeared to have faced “systematic” mistreatment, “not only upon their capture, but also following their transfer to places of internment” in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine and Russia itself.

PIPELINES DAMAGED

The war has brought an energy crunch for much of Western Europe, with German officials seeing the disruption of Russian supplies as a Kremlin power play to pressure Europe over its support for Ukraine.

The danger to energy supplies grew when seismologists reported Tuesday that explosions rattled the Baltic Sea before unusual leaks were discovered on two underwater natural gas pipelines running from Russia to Germany.

Some European leaders and experts pointed to possible sabotage during an energy standoff with Russia provoked by the war in Ukraine.

The three leaks were reported on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which are filled with natural gas but not delivering the fuel to Europe.

The extent of the damage means the Nord Stream pipelines are unlikely to be able to carry any gas to Europe this winter even if there was political will to bring them online, analysts at the Eurasia Group said.

Russia has halted flows on the 760-mile Nord Stream 1 pipeline during the war, while Germany prevented them from ever starting in the parallel Nord Stream 2.

“It is the authorities’ clear assessment that these are deliberate actions — not accidents,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said.

But she added that “there is no information indicating who could be behind it.” Frederiksen also rejected the suggestion that the incident was an attack on Denmark, saying the leaks occurred in international waters.

The incident overshadowed the inauguration of a long-awaited pipeline that will bring Norwegian gas to Poland to bolster the continent’s energy independence from Moscow.

“There’s no doubt, this is not an earthquake,” Lund said.

Danish Defense Minister Morten Bodskov will travel today to Brussels to discuss the leaks with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

Denmark’s Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said nearby Sweden, Germany and Poland have been kept informed, and “we will inform and reach out to Russia in this case.” He said Denmark’s foreign intelligence service didn’t see any increased military threat against Denmark after the three leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called the events “an act of sabotage.”

During a ceremony in northwestern Poland, Morawiecki, Frederiksen and Polish President Andrzej Duda symbolically opened the valve of a yellow pipe belonging to the Baltic Pipe, a new system sending Norwegian gas across Denmark to Poland.

“The era of Russian domination in the gas sphere is coming to an end,” Morawiecki declared. “An era that was marked by blackmail, threats and extortion.”

No official presented evidence of what caused the leaks, but with distrust of Russia running high, some feared Moscow sabotaged its own infrastructure out of spite or to warn that pipelines are vulnerable to attack. The leaks raised the stakes on whether energy infrastructure was being targeted and led to a small bump in natural gas prices.

“We can clearly see that this is an act of sabotage — an act that probably means a next step of escalation in the situation that we are dealing with in Ukraine,” Morawiecki said.

In Sweden, acting Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said “it is probably a case of sabotage,” but not an attack on Sweden.

Andersson added that neighboring oil-rich Norway “has informed us about increased drone activity in the North Sea and the measures they have taken in connection with it.”

Foreign Minister Ann Linde said that Sweden “[is] not ruling out any scenarios and we will not speculate about motive or actor.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that American officials have not confirmed sabotage or an attack.

The German operator of the pipelines, Nord Stream AG, said it’s preparing a survey to assess the damage in cooperation with local authorities.

“Currently, it is not possible to estimate a timeframe for restoring the gas transport infrastructure,” a company statement said. “The causes of the incident will be clarified as a result of the investigation.”

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2022-09-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

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