Russian held Ukraine territory will seek votes to stay with Russia as the Ukraine forces close in those places…
Ukraine shelling has reached some Russian border locations….
Ukraine President Zelensky will address the UN general Assemby’s leaders in New York….
Russian officals are making punishment for it’s men who duck military service….
Russian has NOT moved to a draft so far to fill the wholes in the troop levels…
Here’s the latest on the war and its impact across the globe.
Annexation referendums
- Referendums, which would be illegal under international law, are set to take place Sept. 23 to 27 in the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine, according to Russian news agencies. Separatist officials in the two self-declared “republics” have appealed to Moscow in recent days to annex those territories as Ukrainian forces press a counteroffensive. “The long-suffering people of Donbas deserved to be part of the Great Country, which they always considered their Motherland,” Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, wrote in an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, published on Telegram.
- The Moscow-appointed administration in Kherson is set to hold a referendum starting Friday to become a part of Russia, its chief, Vladimir Saldo, announced Tuesday. He said joining Russia would help secure the southern Ukrainian region, which Ukrainian forces have sought to wrest from Russian hands. The head of the Russian-appointed occupying administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, said a staged referendum would be held on the same dates in the parts of that region controlled by Russian forces, which includes Enerhodar, where Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant is located.
- “If this does transpire, the United States will never recognize Russia’s claims to purportedly annexed territory,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters. “Sham referendums have no legitimacy,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter.
- Kyiv and its allies have condemned such moves.“Sham ‘referendums’ will not change anything,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. An “illegal ‘referendum’” would not stop Ukrainian forces “from destroying occupiers on our land,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on Twitter. The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said in a statement that the E.U. “strongly condemns these planned illegal ‘referenda.’”
Battlefield updates
- Ukrainian forces made small gains in the eastern Luhansk region, which Russia seized almost entirely in recent months, regional governor Serhiy Haidai said. He said troops took control of Bilohorivka near the city of Lysychansk. The Washington Post could not immediately verify the claim.
- A Russian missile hit 300 yards from reactors at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant, and a nearby hydropower facility shut down, state company Energoatom said Monday. But the plant’s three power units were still operating, and no workers were injured in the explosion in the Mykolaiv region, the Ukrainian nuclear operator said.
- Artillery strikes against targets inside Russia have pushed officials in Russian border towns to order hasty evacuations, bringing the impact of the war closer for Russians. While Moscow blamed Ukrainian forces, Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attacks within Russian territory.
Here’s what we know:
With Ukrainian forces on the offensive in the east and south, the Kremlin could use the votes to try to justify absorbing occupied parts of Ukraine and a possible escalation of the war.
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Russia’s moves on referendums have echoes of Putin’s actions in Crimea in 2014.
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Putin kept Russia and the world waiting hours for a speech that never happened.
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Amid Russia’s battlefield losses, its proxies in Ukraine push for annexation.
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As fighting intensifies in Ukraine’s east, a frontline town is cut off from the world.
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Russian lawmakers toughen penalties for soldiers as Moscow appears to signal a possible escalation.
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In occupied Ukraine, resistance to Russian rule deepens.
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Russia’s invasion casts a shadow over the U.N. General Assembly….