For five days in late September, residents of occupied eastern and southern Ukraine were persuaded – in the presence of armed Russian soldiers – by local collaborators and visiting Russian officials to vote in a sham referendum on joining the Russian Federation.
Unsurprisingly, the results went Russia’s way and Vladimir Putin formally annexed the four regions – Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south – in a stage-managed ceremony in Moscow last Friday. In a long and angry speech, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, threatened a nuclear response if Ukraine made any efforts to take back any territory.
However, the Ukrainian military seems to have done exactly that – it has made further incursions into Kherson and Donetsk regions.
