Russia Plans To Hold Elections In Annexed Ukrainian Territory, Kyiv Says Staged Polls Will Be Illegal

Russia proclaimed its annexation of four Ukrainian provinces last year and it has announced plans to hold elections there. Ukraine said any polls staged on annexed territory would be invalid and illegal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted this week that Russian forces were inflicting 10 times more casualties on Ukrainians than they were enduring.

Source : Getty

In its latest move to show control, Russia announced plans on Thursday to hold elections in occupied parts of Ukraine in just three months even as a Ukrainian counteroffensive has pushed back its forces in some areas. While Ukraine’s counteroffensive is in its early stages, military experts say the decisive battles still lie ahead. According to news agency Reuters, corpses of Russian soldiers and burnt-out armoured vehicles line the roadside in villages newly recaptured by Ukrainian troops in what is seen as Kyiv’s biggest advances since last year.

Russia’s announcement of a plan for polls in occupied territory was the latest effort by Moscow to convey that the situation was stable. Its TASS state news agency reported election chief Ella Pamfilova as informing that both the Defence Ministry and the Federal Security Service (FSB) had concluded it would be possible to hold the votes in September.

Moscow proclaimed its annexation of four Ukrainian provinces last year, even though it does not fully control any of them and does not hold the main population centres of two.

As per Ukraine, any elections staged by Russians on annexed territory would be invalid and illegal, Reuters reported.

Ukraine’s Counteroffensive

According to Reuters’s report, villages of Neskuchne and Storozheve over the past two days, showed the first independent confirmation of the Ukrainian advance several kilometres southwards along the Mokry Yali river into territory that Russia had held since the early days of its invasion last year.

The report stated that several bodies of Russian soldiers lay in the streets of ruined and deserted villages. Ukrainian troops in Storozheve told the news agency that they had killed around 50 Russians and captured four there.

The Ukrainian military held its first full media briefing on Thursday since the counteroffensive began to speak on its advances, after maintaiing strict silence about the campaign for more than a week.

Brigadier-General Oleksii Hromov said that troops had captured at least seven settlements and 100 square km (38 square miles) of territory in two major pushes in the south so far.

“We are ready to continue fighting to liberate our territory even with our bare hands,” he said, as quoted by Reuters.

On the southern front, the army had advanced by up to 7 km (4.4 miles) in the area along the Mokry Yali, as well as by up to 3 km (1.8 miles) on another axis further west near the village of Mala Tokmachka, Ukrainian military officials said, as per the report.

Zelenskyy On Ukraine’s Counteroffensive

“Our heroic people, our troops on... the front line are facing very tough resistance,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News in an interview in Kyiv. “Because for Russia to lose this campaign to Ukraine, I would say, actually means losing the war,” he added.

Zelenskyy was quoted saying that the situation on the front lines was “generally positive but it’s very difficult.”

The Ukrainian President also urged the Swiss parliament in a video address to allow other states to re-export Swiss-made weapons to Ukraine, emphasising it as a vital move by the neutral country.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted this week that Moscow’s goals in Ukraine remain unchanged. He claimed that Russian forces were inflicting 10 times more casualties on Ukrainians than they were enduring.

Russia has also released images of Western tanks and armoured vehicles that it claimed to have destroyed or captured.

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