© Reuters. Ukrainian servicemen drive near Bakhmut, as Russia’s offensive in Ukraine continues, in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, September 7, 2022. REUTERS / Ammar Awad
(Reuters) – Russia has held referendums on annexing Ukraine’s four occupied regions, heightening the fallout from a seven-month war that Kyiv calls a sham that puts its people at risk. threatened sanctions if they did not vote.
REFERENCES
* Ukrainian officials say people are banned from leaving some occupied areas until the four-day vote is over, armed groups will come to their homes to force people to vote and staff will be detained. threatened to be sacked if they didn’t join.
* Reuters could not immediately verify reports of enforcement.
* Voting in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces was hastily held after Ukraine recaptured large swathes of the northeast in a counter-offensive earlier this month.
* Ukraine, Western leaders and the United Nations condemned the votes as an illegal precondition for illegal annexation. There were no independent observers, and most of the pre-war population had fled.
* Moscow insists that referendums provide an opportunity for people in the region to express their views.
FIGHTING, ABUSES
* A UN-commissioned investigative committee says it has found evidence of war crimes including executions, rapes, torture and detention of children in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. while visiting 27 sites and interviewing more than 150 victims and witnesses.
* Russia denies intentionally attacking civilians during the conflict and says the allegations of abuse are a smear campaign. It did not immediately comment on the report.
* Ukraine says two drones killed a woman and destroyed an administrative building in the port of Odessa. An Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone, designed to hit its targets, was destroyed over the Black Sea by air defenses.
* Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow does not threaten anyone with nuclear weapons and that an open confrontation with the US and NATO is not in Russia’s interest.
* Putin has been “pushed” into the invasion of Ukraine and wants to put “nice people” in charge of Kyiv, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi says, and has come under fierce criticism shortly before Italy’s election.
QUOTE
* “Today, the best thing for the people of Kherson is not to open the door,” said Yuriy Sobolevsky, the first deputy chairman of the displaced Kherson region, following reports of residents being forced to leave. promissory note.
* “Voting has begun in the referendum on Zaporizhzhia region becoming part of Russia as a constituent entity of the Russian Federation! We are returning home!” Vladimir Rogov, an official in the Russian-installed administration in the region.
