Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-appointed head of Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhya region, has officially ordered a local referendum on the possibility of the province joining the Russian Federation.
Balitsky signed the order at an event held by the We Are Together With Russia movement in the city of Melitopol on August 8.
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The move comes hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that if referendums on joining Russia proceed in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, there can be no peace talks on ending the war launched by Russia against Ukraine nearly six months ago.
"Our country's position remains what it always has been. We will give up nothing of what is ours," Zelenskiy said in his nightly address on August 7. "If the occupiers proceed along the path of pseudo-referendums they will close for themselves any chance of talks with Ukraine and the free world, which the Russian side will clearly need at some point."
On August 8, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Zelenskiy's statement was misdirected if he was addressing Russian citizens or leadership, suggesting that the referendums were the will of the residents of Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, said on August 8 that Ukrainian armed forces had hit Russian occupying forces overnight, using U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers.
According to the Ukrainian side, a "significant" amount of Russian military equipment was destroyed and more than 100 Russian troops were killed in the attack.
A representative of the Russia-imposed authorities in Zaporizhzhya, Vladimir Rogov, rejected the Ukrainian statement, saying that Russian troops were able to fend off the Ukrainian attack in Melitopol.
A significant part of the Zaporizhzhya region, including Melitopol, was occupied by Russian troops in the first days of Russia's unprovoked and full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February.
Russia-appointed officials in Zaporizhzhya and another Ukrainian region, Kherson, have said they plan to hold referendums on joining Russia.
Moscow officials have said that such referendums may be held in September.