Ukraine: annexation referendums by Russia convened as a matter of urgency | War in Ukraine

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.

Russian 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 Luhansk and Donetsk regions announced these votes, as did that of Kherson and Zaporijia (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 mock referendums are not acceptable. The United States has denounced simulacra electoral.

French President Emmanuel Macron has meanwhile lambasted before the United Nations General Assembly a return to the age of imperialism and coloniesshortly after calling the announced polls a parody.

These votes, on the model of the one who formalized the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea (south) by Russia in 2014denounced 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.

Liquidate the russian threat

Ukraine warned on Tuesday that the Russian threat would be liquidatedthe head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Andriï Iermak, denouncing a blackmail Russian motivated by fear of defeat.

The head of diplomacy Dmytro Kouleba for his part assured that Ukraine was going continue to liberate their land.

The announcements come after Russian setbacks in early September, when Moscow’s army withdrew from the Kharkiv region in the face of pressure from kyiv forces, strong in supplies of Western weapons and equipment.

Russian diplomacy has also informed the French ambassador in Moscow that the continuation of arms deliveries to Ukraine was unacceptable.

Kyiv strikes back

The Ukrainian army is also leading a counter-offensive on the Kherson region in the south and another in the direction of the Luhansk 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.

About twenty kilometers away, from Siversk, Ukrainian artillery shelled Russian positions.

It hits very hardtold AFP Natalia, a grocer in this city, in the morning we come out of the cellars, we see the burnt houses.

A house was razed by bombardment in Siversk.

Photo : Getty Images / AFP / Juan Barreto

In the village, exhausted Ukrainian artillerymen rest on their self-propelled gun, covered by a tree. We fired all night, we’ll leave to reload [en munitions, NDLR] and come back latersaid one of them.

Putin: weapons as quickly as possible

Mr. Putin, meeting on Tuesday with arms manufacturers and security officials, demanded to accelerate production capacities pour as quickly as possible to deliver the necessary armaments to its army.

Receiving credentials from new ambassadors, he insisted on the soundness of his foreign policy sovereign.

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.

Tuesday morning, ex-president Dmitry Medvedev and current number two of the Russian Security Council judged that the referendums of annexation would restore a historical justicebecause the Kremlin considers Ukraine to be historically Russian.

Encroaching on the territory of Russia is a crime, and if committed, it allows you to use all forces in self-defensehe threatened.

According to 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, judged that this week will be either the antechamber of our imminent victory either the one nuclear war.