The Russian government under strongman Vladimir Putin is planning a concert in Moscow’s Red Square on Friday evening to welcome the annexation of four regions of Ukraine – Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” – that represent about 15 percent of Ukrainian territory.
The four regions held “referendums” this week in which reports indicate that Russian soldiers pressured civilians to vote yes with door-to-door visits.
Ukrainian government officials denounced the referendums as illegitimate, coercive, and claiming that even with the threat of force, Russian officials allegedly used blank ballots as “yes” votes to join the Russian Federation.
Ukraine’s allies in the West, including the United States, have nearly unanimously agreed not to recognize the annexation of Ukrainian territory.
The referendums echo the situation that began the ongoing Russian invasion in 2014, when Moscow announced that Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula had held a “referendum” voting to become a part of Russia.
Russia has since fully annexed Crimea and recently held a stadium-sized concern bash to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the region’s “return” to Moscow, a situation the vast majority of the free world still considers illegitimate.
The four regions to be “annexed” on Friday connected Crimea to the legitimate territory of Russia; prior to the annexation, Russian officials ordered the building of a controversial bridge to unite Crimea to Russia in an attempt to avoid having to travel through Ukraine to get to the peninsula.
Ukraine has yet to make any progress in reclaiming Crimea, home to a sizable ethnic Russian minority, and has struggled for nearly a decade against the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively known as the Donbass.
Russian President Vladimir Putin talks during a concert marking the 7th anniversary of Crimea annexation, on March 18, 2021 in Moscow, Russia. Tens of thousands of people gathered at Luzhniki Stadium to watch a patriotic concert called “The days of Crimea”. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty)
Putin recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as sovereign states in February, using this as an excuse to expand Russia’s military presence deep into Ukraine.
Kremlin officials announced on Thursday that Moscow will hold a “signing ceremony” officially welcoming the four Ukrainian territories into the Russian Federation followed by a concert. According to the Russian government, the results of the referendums showed overwhelming support for being annexed into Russia: 98 percent of people in Luhansk and 99 percent of those in Donetsk allegedly supported annexation.
The results were marginally less supportive in the other two areas: 93 percent of people in both Kherson and Zaporizhzhia “voted” to join Russia, according to the Ukrainian state media service Ukrinform.
The Ukrainians claimed that, even with reports of coercion, a miniscule percentage of residents participated in the alleged vote – a little as 0.5 percent of the population of Zaporizhzhia.
Denis Pushilin, the head of the Russia-backed “Donetsk People’s Republic,” called the referendum a “colossal result.”
“We have been moving towards this for so long, and here it is – a colossal result. To say that we did not expect such a result would be untrue. I personally believed and continue to believe in Donbass, I believe in our people. We have all wanted this,” Pushilin said, according to Russian outlet Sputnik.
“The results of the vote speak for themselves: the residents of Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye do not want to return to their old lives and have made a conscious and free choice in favor of Russia,” the Russian Foreign Ministry declared in a formal statement on Thursday.
The Foreign Ministry emphasized its allegation that the referendums, which it allegedly did not organize or preside over, “were held in strict compliance with the rules and principles of international law.”
“Despite the provocations of the Kiev regime, which gave criminal orders to launch massive artillery strikes on crowded places and civilian structures, the people were not scared to come to polling stations and express their will,” Foreign Ministry declared.
The government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reacted to the referendums with outrage.
“This farce in the occupied territories cannot even be called an imitation of referendums,” Zelensky said in response. “We knew in advance what would be drawn instead of the results. Intelligence also didn’t have to try very hard. The agreed figures for this farce were thrown into the media. Russia is not even hiding this.”
The United Kingdom’s Sky News reported on Thursday that Red Square appeared to already be preparing for a large party on Friday as early as a day before.
“Giant video screens were set up in Moscow’s Red Square on Wednesday, with billboards proclaiming ‘Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson – Russia!,'” the outlet observed.
The event will likely offer similar entertainment to that of a stadium event held in March to celebrate the anniversary of the seizure of Crimea.
At the time, Putin delivered a speech justifying the expansion of the war in Ukraine as necessary to fight anti-Russian “genocide” and calling Zelensky and his admnistration “neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists.”
In addition to Putin’s remarks, the event featured a concert with performances by Russian nationalist and pro-Putin pop stars. The singers referenced not just the potential annexation of Donbass, but sang songs with references to the Soviet Union and current sovereign states that previously belonged to it.
Singer Oleg Gazmanov, for example, performed his hit “Made in the USSR,” which lists Ukraine alongside Kazakhstan and Belarus as part of one country.
In 2014, the Russian government claimed that 90 percent of the population of Crimea had voted to leave Ukraine and return to Moscow’s control. At the time, under left-wing President Barack Obama, the United States issued a statement of condemnation but did little to oppose the annexation aside from imposing mild sanctions on Russia.
Following Crimea’s annexation, Russia’s lawmakers passed a law to facilitate the annexation of more territories allegedly seeking to be part of the Russian Federation, which should theoretically streamline the process for the capture of the Donbass, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.