Ukraine’s authorities have said citizens helping to organise Russia’s so-called “referendums”, due to conclude on Tuesday in the occupied territories, will face up to five years in prison for their role in orchestrating them.
“We have lists of names of people who have been involved in some way,” presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with th Swiss newspaper Blick, adding that Ukrainians who were forced to vote would not be punished.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is expected to announce the territories’ annexation on Friday when he addresses both houses of Russia’s parliament, according to Russian state media.
Out of the four regions where the vote has been organised, Russia controls almost the entire Luhansk and Kherson regions but only parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions. The area consists of nearly 15% of Ukraine and includes around 4 million people.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said that if Russia annexed the territories, it would make it impossible for Ukraine “to continue any diplomatic negotiation”.
There have been multiple reports of voter intimidation. CCTV footage from the occupied Kherson showed pollsters from the occupying authorities going door-to-door accompanied by armed Russian soldiers. Locals have been made to vote on behalf of residents who evacuated due to low turnout, claimed Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region.
The Ukrainian journalist Maksym Eristavi tweeted that his family in southern Ukraine had been “forced to vote at gunpoint”.
“They come to your house,” he wrote. “You have to openly tick the box for being annexed by Russia (or for staying with Ukraine if you feel suicidal). All while armed gunmen watch you.”
The Russian state news agency Tass said voting took place door-to-door for security reasons.
The territories, along with Crimea, which Russia captured and illegally annexed in 2014, will be folded into a so-called Crimean Federal District, Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper reported.
Russia has been planning to organise referendums since it first occupied the areas in March but its idea was thwarted by active fighting along the frontlines.
But after Russian forces were pushed from Kharkiv region this month, Putin announced the referendums in the remaining occupied areas.
It is thought that Russia will use the annexation to argue that Ukrainian attempts to retake the occupied territories are a direct attack on Russia and therefore could warrant a nuclear response.
The US has warned Russia that there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia if it uses nuclear weapons. “The United States will respond decisively,” the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told NBC.
Ukraine’s authorities say they fear that men in the newly occupied territories will be conscripted to fight – as they were in the parts of eastern Ukraine that have been under Russian occupation since 2014.