Voting for membership in the Russian Federation has begun in four oblasts of Ukraine.
"Russian proxy officials in four regions — Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizka in the south — earlier this week announced plans to hold referendums over four days beginning on Friday. Russia controls nearly all of two of the four regions, Luhansk and Kherson, but only a fraction of the other two, Zaporizka and Donetsk.
Ukrainian officials have dismissed the voting as grotesque theater — staging polls in cities laid to waste by Russian forces and abandoned by most residents. President Vladimir Zelenskyy thanked Ukraine’s allies for their steadfast support and said 'the farce' of 'sham referenda' would do nothing to change his nation’s fight to drive Russia from Ukraine.
Ukrainian partisans, sometimes working with special operations forces, have blown up warehouses holding ballots and buildings where Russian proxy officials preparing for the vote held meetings.
Ukrainian partisans, sometimes working with special operations forces, have blown up warehouses holding ballots and buildings where Russian proxy officials preparing for the vote held meetings. Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that they are engaged in a campaign to assassinate key Russian administration officials; more than a dozen have been blown up, shot and poisoned, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials.
An explosion rocked the Russian-controlled southern city of Melitopol on Friday morning before the vote got underway. Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor, warned residents to stay away from Russian military personnel and equipment". -Marc Santora, New York Times
Predictably, the vile Ukrainian regime has resorted to terrorism to prevent the votes from happening. However, such measures taken by the Zelenskyy regime against its still Ukrainian compatriots will only serve to encourage the people in the four oblasts to vote for an alignment with Russia.
After any or all of the four south-eastern oblasts determine by referendum to join the Russian Federation, and the Russian Duma ratifies their accession, President Putin is likely to formally, one last time, present Ukraine and NATO with Russia's peace terms.
If Ukraine and NATO reject or thwart this final offer to negotiate a political settlement and continue to attack the territories of the Russian Federation, then President Putin will declare legal justification to impose a settlement that ensures Russia's security by all necessary military means.
It's more than a bit grating that so many misinformed Westerners remain blithely ignorant and still believe that the region in question was "conquered" from Ukraine by "marauding, imperialistic" Russians.
Without doubt, the corporate media will assert that the vote is irregular and that the results, likely to be pro-Russian, will be illegitimate.
Be that as it may, as much as the West likes to express its admiration for democracy, it's a rarity to have plebiscites for the approval of legislative reforms inside governmental systems of representative democracies.
Furthermore, in spite of the utter ubiquity of distorted news reports coming out of the Western press, given the inordinately high percentage of voter participation, the referendums taking place in the oblasts are, presumably, more democratically legitimate than any U.S. presidential election since 1900.