Russia will on Friday begin formally annexing up to 18% of Ukrainian territory, with President Vladimir Putin expected to host a ceremony in the Kremlin to declare four occupied Ukrainian territories part of Russia.
The ceremony would take place on Friday at 15:00 local time (08:00 ET) in the Kremlin’s St. George’s Hall, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Putin will deliver a speech and meet with Russian-backed leaders of the four occupied regions on the sidelines of the ceremony, he added.
The announcements come after people in four occupied areas of Ukraine supposedly voted in huge numbers in favor of joining Russia, in five-day polls that were illegal under international law and dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a sham.
The so-called referendums were organized by Russian-backed separatists in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) in the eastern Donbas region, where fighting has raged since the rebels seized control of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014.
The other two areas to hold so-called referendums were Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine. Russia has occupied the two regions since shortly after it invaded the country in late February. On Thursday, Putin signed decrees recognizing the two regions as independent.
Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Russian-backed administration in Kherson, urged Putin to annex the region on Wednesday, following the so-called referendum there.
The Moscow-aligned leadership in all four places claimed the processes yielded massive majorities for those “voting” in favor of acceding to Russian sovereignty: 87.05% in Kherson, 93.11% in Zaporizhzhia, 98.42% in the LPR and 99.23% in the DPR.
The process was widely panned as illegitimate, as experts said it was impossible to hold a free and fair election in a war zone or occupied territory, which United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed in remarks Thursday.
“They cannot be called a genuine expression of the popular will,” Guterres said of the so-called referendums.
Should Russia proceed to annex the territories, it would violate “everything the international community is meant to stand for,” Guterres said.