Putin invaded my home. Now he's trying to legitimize his obscene war with fake referendums

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KYIV — In what was clearly a co-ordinated maneuver, the so-called leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, along with other Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, announced on Tuesday that they will be holding referendums on becoming part of Russia. The results of the hastily organized referendums — which will take place from Sept. 23-27 — are, of course, a foregone conclusion: they will claim that the vast majority would prefer to live in President Vladimir Putin’s brutal dictatorship than in democratic Ukraine. Indeed, we’ve seen this before.

Similar referendums were held in 2014, to create the Russian-backed “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk (which are now using the same tactic to legitimize being annexed by Russia). I was attending school in Donetsk when the bogus referendums were held on separating from Ukraine.

The vote was notable for how it differed from a regular, democratic election. Instead of voters lists, workers had blank sheets on which they manually filled in the information. Instead of formal ballots, there were simple pieces of printed paper that were completely unsecured. I could not find any booths to ensure the secrecy of my vote. I felt that I needed to use my passport to hide the fact that I was voting against secession. And it was all done under the watchful eye of a large number of armed men.

According to officials, between 89 and 95 per cent voted in favour of self-rule, though an independent Pew poll conducted at the time found the exact opposite: that 70 per cent of those living in east Ukraine wanted to remain united with the rest of the country.

Recent events show that the the same thing will happen in the upcoming referendums. The most interesting situation will be in Mykolaiv Oblast, in the south. Only five per cent of its territory remains under Russian control, meaning that it will be very hard to claim that a referendum conducted in those areas has any sort of legitimacy.

But perhaps that doesn’t matter anyway, because the civilized countries of the world know who they are dealing with, and have stopped believing Russia’s lies. Hopefully, none of these pseudo-referendums will be recognized by foreign countries, aside from Russia and its client states.

As a person who was raised in the Donetsk suburbs and who spent 20 years living there, I have seen first hand the propaganda that attempts to paint a picture of Ukraine and Russia as brotherly nations. Some of the locals even consider themselves Russians. This propaganda narrative has been circulating there since the Soviet Union fell and Ukraine gained its independence. It worked quite well, I must say; otherwise, it would have been much harder to recruit separatist forces and occupy the region.

But why does Putin need new territories to join Russia? In his sick mind, he believes it will slow down, if not entirely halt, the successful counter-offensive conducted by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, because he believes they would not dare attack sovereign Russian territory. In his mind, it would also act as a deterrent against western support for Ukraine, because if any NATO supplied weapons were to hit those territories, Putin could use it as a pretext to escalate the conflict.

That is what he thinks. However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy mentioned in a recent speech that nothing is about to change, pledging that the occupiers will be thrown out of the country and that all the occupied territories will be reclaimed. Even the partial mobilization announced by Putin on Wednesday, which will allow him to call up 300,000 reservists over the coming months, won’t be enough to break the resolve of the Ukrainian people.

Besides becoming a new Russian dictator, Putin wants to bring a new version of the U.S.S.R. to life. But that is not possible without Ukraine and its supplies. He needs coal from Donetsk, metals from Dnipro and Zaporizhia, and agriculture from Kherson and Mykolaiv, all of which are planning to hold upcoming referendums.

Having direct control over these areas would give him overland access to his Black Sea fleet stationed on the Crimean peninsula, and allow him to save face by claiming a strategic victory in a war that has not been going his way.

What he does not count on, and what he has underestimated since the start of his invasion, is the firm resolve of the Ukrainian people, who will fight until the bitter end. The bogus referendums will not stop us from getting back what is ours.

National Post

Oleksii Kobzar is a journalist based in Kyiv. An analyst for the “Sunday News Show” on Ukraine’s ICTV channel, he has expertise in pro-Russian movements.