Pro-Russian Officials Say Annexation Vote In Ukraine Delivers Expected Result: Overwhelming Approval

Russian-backed officials in four regions where so-called referendums on joining the Russian Federation were held over the last five days say voters have overwhelmingly supported the annexation.

Russian-installed election officials in Zaporizhzhya, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kherson, reported the expected outcome on September 27 after polls closed.

The polling authority in Zaporizhzhya said 93 percent of the ballots cast were in support of the annexation but added that this was a preliminary result.

Authorities in Kherson said 87 percent of voters opted for Russian annexation after vote-counting was complete, while in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, 98 percent opted for annexation with all votes counted, Russian news agencies said, citing local authorities.

In the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, the Russian-installed poll body said 99 percent of voters opted for Russian annexation after all ballots were counted, according to news agencies.

Denis Pushilin, a Moscow-backed separatist leader in Donetsk, said: "We have all wanted this for a very long time," according to Russia's state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

The so-called referendums in Russian-controlled areas of the regions began on September 23. They have been dismissed by Ukraine, Western governments, and the United Nations because they are illegal under international law.

The vote was held amid claims by some local officials that voters have been threatened and coerced to vote. Election officials brought ballot boxes house-to-house in many cases accompanied by armed Russian forces.

Valentina Matviyenko, the chairperson of the parliament's upper house, said Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to address the assembly about the referendums on September 30 and said lawmakers could consider annexation legislation on October 4.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Ukraine would "defend" citizens in the regions where the votes were held and elsewhere.

"This farce in the occupied territory cannot even be called an imitation of referendums," he said on Telegram. People were "forced to fill out some papers for a TV picture under the muzzles of machine guns," he added.

He said every country in the world must now provide a clear signal against Russian annexation.

In a video message earlier to the United Nations, Zelenskiy said that Ukraine would not be able to negotiate with Russia after the votes.

Kyiv and its allies have denounced the votes as a "sham" and that they would never recognize the results of balloting that runs counter to the UN Charter and international law.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also called the Moscow-organized votes a "sham" and a "blatant violation of international law."

Stoltenberg said on Twitter that he spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on September 27 "and made clear that NATO Allies are unwavering in our support for Ukraine's sovereignty and right to self-defense."

U.S. President Joe Biden has previously said the polls were a "sham" and nothing but a "false pretext to try to annex parts of Ukraine by force."

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on September 27 urged the European Union to impose further economic sanctions on Russia to punish it for the votes and said the moves by Moscow would not change Ukraine's actions on the battlefield.

Kuleba, speaking after talks in Kyiv with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, said that personal sanctions would not suffice as a punishment for the referendums, which Putin on September 27 claimed were meant to "save people" in those regions.

Voting was also held in Russia because thousands of residents of the areas that are controlled by Russian forces in Ukraine fled after the war started.

Observers viewed the outcome of the ballot as a foregone conclusion that follows the same pattern that Moscow applied in 2014 to annex the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in the wake of huge pro-Western street demonstrations that saw the country's Kremlin-friendly president ousted.

Russian troops have suffered serious setbacks in the conflict this month, both in the east and south of Ukraine, which observers say pushed Putin to rush ahead with the vote to cement Moscow's authority there.

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The British Ministry of Defense said on September 27 in its daily intelligence bulletin that Russia's leaders "almost certainly hope that any accession announcement will be seen as a vindication of the special military operation and will consolidate patriotic support for the conflict."

The UN Security Council was scheduled to hold a meeting later on September 27 on the referendums.

With reporting by AFP, AP, Reuters, and dpa