Russia confirmed on Thursday it will formally annex parts of Ukraine where occupied areas held Kremlin-orchestrated “referendums” on living under Moscow’s rule that the Ukrainian government and the West denounced as illegal and rigged.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend a ceremony at the Kremlin on Friday when four regions of Ukraine will officially join Russia, spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Peskov said the regions’ pro-Moscow administrators would sign treaties to join Russia during the ceremony in the Kremlin’s St. George Hall.
- What questions do you have about the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Email ask@cbc.ca or join us live now in the comments.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called an emergency meeting of the National Security and Defense Council for Friday, apparently in response to the Russian decision.
The official annexation was widely expected after votes closed on Tuesday in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine and after Moscow claimed residents overwhelmingly supported their areas formally becoming part of Russia.
Ukraine, the European Union and the US and Canada have denounced the vote as a sham.
“It is absolutely unacceptable,” said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, whose country currently holds the EU presidency. “We reject this unilateral annexation based on a completely falsified and illegitimate process.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Thursday denounced the vote as a “dictated peace” that is contrary to free and fair elections and warned that no citizen is free or safe in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine as long as “this Russian dictate” prevails.
Baerbock told a news conference in Berlin that officials have heard of people in the four regions being taken “under threats and sometimes even [at] gunpoint” to leave their ballots in transparent boxes.
Finland to limit arrivals from Russia
Armed troops had gone door-to-door with election officials to collect ballots in five days of voting. The suspiciously high margins were characterized as a land grab by an increasingly cornered Russian leadership after embarrassing military losses in Ukraine.
Referendums were held in the administrations installed in Moscow in the four regions of southern and eastern Ukraine: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. The Kremlin earlier this week reported support ranging from 87 to 99 percent in votes across the region.
WATCH l Putin unlikely to stop in these regions unless marked: Zelenskky adviser:
Canada will ‘escalate’ response to Russia if annexation goes ahead, says Zelenskyy’s top diplomatic adviser
Ukraine President Zelensky’s top diplomatic adviser says Canada will definitely ‘escalate’ its response to Russia, if Kremlin goes ahead with its annexation of Ukraine: ‘That’s what we heard from your prime minister today,’ says Igor Zhovkva .
The Kremlin has been unmoved by Western criticism of the referendums and the invasion. After a counteroffensive by Ukraine this month caused Moscow’s forces major setbacks on the battlefield, Russia said it would call up 300,000 reservists to join the fight. He also warned that he might resort to nuclear weapons.
The Institute for the Study of War in Britain, citing Russian reports, stated that the number of Russian men of military age fleeing the country probably exceeds the number of forces Moscow used to initially invade Ukraine in February.
“The best and the well-educated are overrepresented among those trying to leave Russia,” the institute said in a new report. “When combined with reservists being mobilized, the domestic economic impact of reduced labor availability and accelerating ‘brain drain’ is likely to become increasingly significant.”
This partial mobilization is deeply unpopular in some areas, however, leading to protests, scattered violence and tens of thousands of Russians fleeing the country. Kilometer-long lines formed at some borders and Moscow also set up recruitment offices at the borders to intercept some of those trying to leave.
People entering Finland line up at the passport control area on Thursday at the border control crossing in Vaalimaa on the border with Russia. (Alessandro Rampazzo/AFP/Getty Images)
Finland’s government said Thursday it would significantly limit passenger traffic at its border with Russia, barring Russian citizens traveling on tourist visas from entering the Nordic country starting the next day.
“The decision in principle aims to completely prevent Russian tourism to Finland and related traffic through Finland,” Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said during a press conference.
From September 1, Finland reduced the number of visas, including for tourism purposes, issued to Russian citizens to a tenth of the usual number, a move seen as a show of solidarity with Ukraine.
At least 8 dead in the latest violence
In the latest violence, Ukraine’s presidential office says at least eight civilians have been killed and 16 others injured by Russian shelling.
The office said Thursday’s casualties included two adults and a child killed by a missile attack in the city of Dnipro on Wednesday.
A Ukrainian firefighter stands in front of a destroyed building in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday. (Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images)
The attack injured five people, including a 12-year-old girl pulled from the rubble, and damaged 60 houses, a street market and power lines.
Russian bombing also hit Nikopol across the Dnieper River from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Russian forces occupy the plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, but Ukrainian technicians still run it.
A suspected landmine explosion at the perimeter fence on Thursday that was likely triggered by wild animals damaged power lines, according to Ukraine’s national atomic energy agency, Energoatom.
In eastern Donetsk region, Russian artillery shelling killed five civilians and wounded four.
Meanwhile, authorities in the city of Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, say 11 people have been injured after four rockets hit the city. Thursday’s early morning attack damaged high-rise buildings and private homes.