By Yuras Karmanau, KYIV
Ukraine
After seven weary months of
war, many Ukrainians fear more suffering and political repression awaits them
as referendums
orchestrated by the Kremlin with help from gun-toting police portend
Russia’s imminent annexation of four occupied regions. |
| A woman shows her ballot to journalists prior to voting in a referendum in Luhansk, Luhansk People's Republic controlled by Russia-backed separatists, eastern Ukraine, Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022. Voting began Friday in four Moscow-held regions of Ukraine on referendums to become part of Russia. |
Many residents fled the
regions before the referendums got underway, scared about being forced to vote
or potentially being conscripted
into the Russian army.
Petro Kobernik, who left the
Russian-held southern city of Kherson just before the preordained voting began
Friday, said the prospect of living under Russian law and the
escalating war made him and others extremely jittery about the future.
“The situation is changing
rapidly, and people fear that they will be hurt either by the Russian military,
or Ukrainian guerrillas and the advancing Ukrainian troops,” Kobernik, 31, said
in a telephone interview.
As some Russian officials
brought ballots to neighborhoods accompanied by armed police, Kobernik said his
70-year-old father shut the door of his private house in the village of Novotroitske
— part of Kherson — and vowed not to let anyone in.
The referendums, denounced by
Kyiv and its Western allies as rigged, are taking place in the
Russian-controlled Luhansk and Kherson regions, and in occupied areas of the
Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. They are widely viewed as a pretext for
annexation, and Russian authorities are expected to announce the regions as
theirs once the vote ends Tuesday.
The Kremlin has used this
tactic before. In 2014, it held a hastily called referendum in Ukraine’s Crimea
region to justify annexation of the Black Sea peninsula, a move that was
denounced as illegitimate by most of the world.
Ukrainian authorities have
told residents of the four Russian-occupied regions that they would face
criminal punishment if they cast ballots and advised them to leave.
Russian President Vladimir
Putin, who began
mobilizing more troops for the war last week, said he’s ready to use
nuclear weapons to protect territory in a clear threat to Ukraine to halt its
attempts to reclaim the regions.
Putin’s
escalating rhetoric and politically risky decision to call up as many
as 300,000 army reservists comes after Russians were hastily forced to retreat
from large swaths of northeastern Ukraine earlier this month. A fierce
Ukrainian counteroffensive continues in the country’s east and south.
Moscow-appointed governor of
the southern Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, vowed that Ukrainian attempts to
derail the referendum by shelling the city won’t succeed.
“It’s complicated because of
security issues, but everything will be done to make the balloting safe for the
voters and election officials,” Saldo said in a video address. “People are
waiting to join Russia and want it done as quickly as possible.”
Moscow-backed separatists in
the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions claim that most residents of these
territories have dreamed about joining Russia ever since Russia’s annexation of
Crimea.
But many residents there tell
a different story.
“The streets are empty as
people stay home,” Marina Irkho, a 38-year-old resident of the Sea of Azov port
city of Berdyansk said by phone. “No one wants them to declare us part of
Russia and start rounding up our men.”
She said that that “those who
actively stood for Ukraine have left or gone into hiding,” adding that many of
the older people who supported Russia have stayed but feel scared.
Ukrainian guerrillas have
continuously targeted Moscow-appointed officials in the occupied regions.
Just a week before the referendum,
a deputy head of the Berdyansk city administration and his wife who headed the
city election commission were killed in an attack.
Members of the Yellow Band
guerrilla group named after Ukraine’s yellow-and-blue national flag have spread
leaflets threatening those who cast ballots and urged residents to send photos
and video of people who vote to track them down later.
The guerrillas also posted
phone numbers of election commission chiefs in the Kherson region, calling on
pro-Ukraine activists to “make their life unbearable.”
Ukrainian officials say signs
of the referendums’ illegitimacy are all around.
“The Russians are seeing the
citizens’ fear and reluctance to vote, so they are forced to take people in,”
said Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor of the Russia-held city of Melitopol,
who was detained and held by the Russians before leaving the city.
“Groups of collaborators and
Russians accompanied by armed troops go from one apartment to another, but few
people open the doors,” Fedorov said. “The haste with which they organized that
pseudo-referendum shows that they weren’t going to even count the ballots in
earnest.”
Larysa Vinohradova, a resident
of the port city of Mariupol who left the city after the Russian invasion, said
that many of her friends stayed because they had to take care of elderly
parents refusing to flee. “They don’t stand for Russia, they want Mariupol to
be part of Ukraine, and they are waiting for it,” she said, bursting into
tears.
Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai,
who left the region after it was swept by the Russian forces, said that
residents fear that the Russians will round up more men in the region for
military service following Putin’s mobilization order.
“The Russians are using this
pseudo-referendum as a pretext for armed people to visit apartments and search
for any remaining men to mobilize them and also look for anything suspicious
and pro-Ukrainian,” Haidai told The Associated Press.
“The swift Ukrainian
counteroffensive has scared the Russians,” he added.
Analysts say Putin is hoping
to use the threat of military escalation to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy into negotiating with the Kremlin.
“The haste with which the
referendum were called shows the weakness of the Kremlin, not its strength,”
said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta Center, an independent think tank
based in Kyiv. “The Kremlin is struggling to find levers to influence the
situation that has spun out of its control.”
