In the full advance of troops from Kyiv and unaware of what border Vladimir Putin intended for the occupied territories in Ukraine, the State Duma, Russia’s lower house, on Monday approved the annexation treaties that the Russian president had signed to the institution The last Friday. This formality has brought no surprises and all that remains is for the Federation Council, the Russian Senate, to approve an annexation proclamation that is not recognized by the international community, beginning with the United States and ending with China.
Minutes before the meeting of the deputies, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov was again faced with a question that has been coming up again and again in recent days: Which line should demarcate the territory annexed by Russia? “The Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics will have the borders of 2014. In the cases of Kherson and Zaporizhia, we will continue to consult their borders with the population of these regions,” said the Kremlin representative, who declined to answer Russian journalists when they insisted that he clarify what kind of consultation in these provinces would take place. At least the configuration [de cada región] It will only depend on the will of the people living on its territory,” he added.
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By mentioning the 2014 borders, Peskov was referring to the illegal referenda pro-Russians organized in Lugansk and Donetsk in May this year, when they proclaimed the independence of both regions despite not controlling their capitals. Putin even went so far as to demand that they be postponed, and these pro-independence votes without guarantee or legitimacy were only recognized by Moscow on February 21 this year, when the Kremlin used them as a pretext to justify the offensive launched against Ukraine three days after.
Russia no longer controls much of Donetsk, and Ukrainian troops are fighting again in Lugansk, three months after the Kremlin announced their conquest. However, in the case of Zaporizhia and Kherson, the situation for the Russians is even more complicated. In the first it occupies only one strip and does not even have the capital in its hands, and in the province of Kherson there has been a Ukrainian advance that has caused nervousness in the Russian ranks. The head of the military administration deployed there, Vladimir Saldo, confirmed the breach in part of their lines, behind which is the Dnieper River.
Faced with Peskov’s doubts about the borders of the occupied territories, the chairman of the parliamentary state-building committee, Pavel Krasheninnikov, stated that the borders of Kherson and Zaporizhia would correspond to their Ukrainian demarcations, plus a stretch of neighboring Mikolayiv as required by their military administrations . But while the Kherson official added two occupied Mikolayiv districts to his territory for allegedly collecting votes with portable ballot boxes, he also included the Ukrainian-controlled part of the region.
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With referendums, but without elections
“The people who live in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia will always be our citizens,” Putin announced last Friday at the Grand Kremlin Palace. The annexation treaties signed by the president and representatives in these territories stipulate that only those residents who remain there or go to Russia are granted citizenship if they pledge allegiance to Moscow. The part of the population that has fled will not be accommodated in their previous homes.
This process follows five days of pseudo-referendums in these occupied territories, during which numerous irregularities were found. To justify the annexation, the Kremlin organized a vote on the territory of Ukraine, which is not supported by its partners such as China, India, Serbia, Armenia and Kazakhstan. These referendums took place in the middle of the war, and a large part of the population of these regions fled to the part of Ukraine defending Kyiv or to other countries. Indeed, polling stations were opened in Russia, but no vote was given to those who left their homes for Europe.
Although the Kremlin claims it has conducted clean referendums, it plans to hold local elections there for at least a year. The deal, passed this Monday, provides for regional elections to be held in September 2023, and until then, the territories it occupies will be run by senior interim officials, who will be appointed by Putin himself over the next 10 days.
Denís Pushilin, who was appointed head of that region in 2018 in an election in which Moscow vetoed the participation of the region’s first separatist leader and supporter of the 2014 referendum, Pável Gubarev, will remain Donetsk’s governor. On social media, the politician denounced his exclusion and that of other pro-Russian figures at the time. “Looking at the delegates invited to the event, I realize I don’t want to sit next to them. They are an unconcerned insignificance, their place is in prison, not the Kremlin,” Gubarev said acidly.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defended that the recent referendums were compatible with the principle of self-determination envisaged by the UN, despite doing so against the criteria of the organization’s own Secretary-General António Guterres, who denounced this days earlier Extension “As a result of force or threat is a violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law”.
On the other hand, Lavrov resorted to a new argument to justify his military expansion. “Ratification of the treaties will benefit all multinational peoples of our country,” said the head of Russian diplomacy.
The Kremlin will now legislate that the only official language in the occupied territories will be Russian, although it promises to recognize Ukrainians “the right to preserve their mother tongue and to facilitate conditions for their study.”
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