Comment RIGA, LATVIA — Russian officials and their proxies in Ukraine are scrambling to permanently annex occupied territories in the country’s south, possibly by engineering referendums, perhaps as early as September. Senior Kremlin officials and propagandists on state television have warned that Russia will never give up the occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia in southern Ukraine – home to more than 2.5 million people before the Russian invasion – and that returning the territory would not will be subject to negotiation if peace talks resume. In the clearest indication that the referendums will go ahead, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Russia has changed the geography in Ukraine, effectively redrawing its borders. He threatened that Moscow would claim even more Ukrainian territory unless the West stopped arming Kyiv. US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned on Tuesday that Moscow was preparing “fake” referendums on annexing more of Ukraine, moves he called “premeditated, illegal and unlawful”. According to the White House, Russia is returning to the 2014 playbook it used when it seized Crimea and fomented separatist uprisings in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Referendums in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk were supposed to whitewash Russia’s actions but were marred by electoral fraud, marked ballots and intimidation. Few nations recognized them. Russian political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of political analysis group R.Politik, said Lavrov’s comments were a first attempt to legitimize Russia’s annexation plans. President Vladimir Putin has not yet made the final call for referendums, he said, but he predicted they would be held before the end of the year amid growing pressure from Russia’s “war party,” hardline security chiefs and hawkish politicians who they are the main proponents of war. “The so-called war party believes that Russia should annex these territories, that they are part of Russia historically and therefore should be returned. For them, it is inevitable,” he said. He added that Western leaders could do little to stop Russia, having ruled out military intervention. Russia sends teachers to Ukraine to check what students are learning Putin justified the invasion by claiming that eastern Ukraine is historically Russian land and is presented as a new version of early 18th century Tsar Peter the Great reclaiming lost territory. Moscow has mounted an aggressive campaign to absorb and Russify the newly occupied territories in recent months, using a combination of terror, state propaganda, donations and promises to rebuild devastated areas. Local officials, activists and journalists have been killed, arrested or disappeared, while anti-Russian protests have been suppressed. Moscow appointed Russian officials to manage the regions, and Putin issued a decree ordering the issuance of Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens. Putin’s deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko, and the head of the president’s United Russia party, Andrei Turchak, along with other government ministers and prominent politicians, frequently visit the occupied territories. On Monday, Kiriyenko narrowly escaped a Ukrainian missile attack when he visited a hydroelectric plant in the Kherson region, according to pro-Kremlin military journalist Semyon Pegov. Mikhail Razvozayev, governor of Sevastopol in Russian-held Crimea, said on Friday that the city is helping the Ukrainian city of Melitopol to organize a referendum on the Zaporizhzhia region’s incorporation into Russia. “We have successful experience working in the liberated territories,” he said in a Telegram post, referring to areas Russia has seized by military force, saying his officials had been working for months in the Luhansk region. “We will now also help Melitopolis with the establishment of a peaceful life, with a referendum and integration.” Moscow is presenting the referendums as a response to local enthusiasm for joining Russia, not as top-down politics — as Putin’s 2020 constitutional change allowing him to rule until 2036 was portrayed as the inevitable result of a popular uprising. Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee and a member of Russia’s negotiating team in previous peace talks with Ukraine, suggested September 11 as a possible date for referendums. Russia seeks to militarize students and censor textbooks amid war Lavrov on Wednesday ruled out new peace talks and warned that Russia will not return areas under its control. “Now the geography is different. It’s not just DPR and LPR,” he said in an interview with state-run RT, referring to the two separatist regions in the east. “It is also the Kherson region, Zaporizhzhia and a number of other territories, and this process continues, and it continues consistently and persistently,” he added, pledging that Russia would protect the regions “that want to determine their own destiny independently.” . The Kremlin says Ukrainians in the occupied territories should decide their own future, but Russia has a history of election fraud under Putin. “Putin would only want to hold these referendums if he is sure of getting about 90% of the pro-Russian vote,” Stanovaya said. He said he was in no rush, confident that he was winning the war and that time was on his side. But pro-Russian officials set up as puppets in the occupied territories are desperate for the territories to be absorbed by Moscow as quickly as possible, worried about a threatened Ukrainian counterattack. “For them, it’s a question of security in reality and guarantees for their future,” Stanovaya explained. On a visit to Kherson in May, Turchak said “Russia is here forever.” Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov said as much on a trip in June, pledging to implement Russia’s education system in Ukrainian schools, including teaching the nations’ version of history. “Preparations for the referendum are underway. Nothing changes. Plans go nowhere. Thousands of people have already received Russian passports. The process is ongoing,” Kirill Stremusov, deputy head of the Russian plenipotentiary administration in Kherson, told RIA Novosti. United Russia and senior government officials are spearheading efforts to absorb the occupied territories, with the goal of creating an irreversible reality. Russia introduced its own currency and welfare system and tore down place names printed in Ukrainian, replacing them with Russian signs. Hundreds of teachers are being offered generous pay to move to Russian-controlled areas. Construction teams are being dispatched. Officials have set up “relief centers,” handing out food and medicine and offering virtual appointments with Russian doctors. On Tuesday, United Russia set up a “Centre for the Support of Citizen Initiatives” in Luhansk, even as Russia cracks down on activists at home. A twin cities initiative was created, with Russian cities and regions responsible for helping the occupied regions of Ukraine devastated by the invasion. Ukrainian TV has been replaced by wall-to-wall anti-Ukrainian propaganda on Russian state television. Pundits on state television often deny that Ukraine is a country, call the leaders Nazis, or declare that Russia will not stop its attacks until it conquers the entire country. Prominent Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, told state television on Tuesday that Russia had to build a future without Ukraine “because Ukraine as it was cannot continue to exist.” “There will be no Ukraine as we have known it for many years,” he declared triumphantly. “It will no longer be Ukraine.”
