Report on Donbass and Kherson
Dates for referendums should already be set
4/27/2022, 9:18 p.m
Does President Putin want to annex the conquered territories in Ukraine to Russia? This is reported by the Russian exile medium “Meduza”. For weeks, pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country have been talking about a possible referendum on accession to Russia. It could be there in just a few weeks.
The separatist governments of the self-proclaimed “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk are apparently planning to hold referenda on joining Russia. This is reported by the Russian exile medium “Meduza”, citing three sources close to the Russian presidential administration. The voting should therefore take place in a few weeks – on May 14th and 15th.
According to the report, the Kremlin is not only aiming to annex the areas that were held by the separatists before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rather, the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions are to be “incorporated”. This would affect, among other things, the destroyed city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea, the city of Kramatorsk and other territories that are partly controlled by Kyiv.
According to the report, a referendum is also to be held on May 14 or 15 in the partially occupied Cherson region in southern Ukraine. In this case, the issue should be the independence of the region from Ukraine and the creation of the “Kherson People’s Republic”. According to insiders, this planned “republic” could also be annexed by Russia in the future.
Appointments have been postponed several times
As “Meduza” further reports, citing sources close to the Kremlin, the votes were originally planned for the end of April, but were postponed several times due to the failure of the Russian army. “Meduza’s” interlocutors also emphasized that the annexation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions was the personal wish of the “top leadership”, ie Putin.
At the end of March, the “Luhansk People’s Republic” declared that it could soon hold a referendum on joining the Russian Federation. The leader of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, Denis Puschilin, also stated that membership should be considered. However, both separatist governments claimed that they wanted to hold the votes only after the end of the war.
There was also an internationally unrecognized referendum in spring 2014 on the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. After that, Russia accepted Crimea into its territory against protests from the West.