Officials in Russian-occupied territories in eastern and southern Ukraine are forcing people to vote “under a gun barrel,” residents said as staged referendums — intended to validate Moscow’s annexation of territory it occupies — entered their second day.
On Saturday, Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya and a close Putin ally, appeared to acknowledge the problem of the poor quality of recruits, saying that half of Russia’s 5 million police and law enforcement officials should be drafted instead.750 people were arrested in protests throughout the country, according to rights monitor OVD-Info.
At the same time, Putin signed a law toughening penalties for desertion and “voluntary surrender” during military operations. He also fast-tracked Russian citizenship for foreigners who joined the fight against Ukraine — a move designed to appeal to the many migrant workers in Russia from former Soviet Central Asian countries. On Wednesday, however, those countries’ Moscow embassies issued warnings to their citizens that it was illegal to participate in a foreign war.
Zelensky promised a “tough response” and “corresponding consequences” to the “collaboration with evil.” On Friday, Ukrainian officials announced they had stripped the Iranian ambassador to Ukraine of his accreditation and moved to significantly reduce the number of personnel at the Iranian Embassy in Kyiv.
Russian media showed images of people lined up outside voting stations, but Ukrainian officials said that they had either bused in from elsewhere or were soldiers wearing civilian clothing. So-called “international observers” gave their blessing to the proceedings. One of them, Eliseo Bertolasi from Italy, observed the 2018 general elections in the Donetsk People’s Republic, the unrecognized Moscow-supported separatist state in eastern Ukraine.
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