Ukraine: US warns of “mock referendums” in Russian-held areas of Ukraine, August 2022

Inside the Russian occupation

The US authorities have information that Russia continues to prepare “mock referendums” in the areas of Ukraine that it holds, according to John Kirby, a national security official, speaking in late August.

Soon after the launch of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, Russian forces quickly took control of large areas of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south-east. These were among the most notable successes of the early phase of Russia’s military campaign, which it has found harder to replicate elsewhere. Since then, there have been regular reports, including from the local administrations installed by Russian forces, that referendums on joining Russian—along the lines of the flawed plebiscite organised in Crimea ahead of its annexation in March 2014—are to be organised in newly taken areas, as well Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where Russia has been in de facto control since 2014-15. One plan envisions merging these areas into a single region of the Russian Federation.

A date of September 11th has been suggested for this, to coincide with elections across Russia. However, it is not clear that conditions for such an operation are currently in place. First, this is because, with its new, longer-range Western weapons, Ukraine has had some success in recent weeks in hampering Russian logistics and communications. So, for example, the bridges needed to re-supply Russian forces in Kherson have been badly damaged by Ukrainian artillery, forcing Russian troops to deploy pontoon constructions and, it is reported, to relocate army command back across the Dnipro River. Second, Russia’s advance in the Donbas seems to have ground to a halt, so that it still controls only about 60% of Donetsk region, according to local reports. It could be problematic for the Russian leadership to proceed with the planned referendums before even its scaled-back war aims, of taking the whole of the Donbas, have been achieved. Third, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the Ukrainian president, has said that holding these referendums would prevent the resumption high-level peace talks with Russia—which Russia now seems more keen to pursue, according to a message delivered recently to President Zelenskyi by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his Turkish counterpart.

In Kherson, a strategically important Black Sea port city, regular protests against Russian occupation took place in March and April. Since then, however, many of the organisers have been detained. In the newly held territories, Russia has introduced rapid, if somewhat crude, programme of Russification. This includes:

• the erection of billboards proclaiming that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people”, in line with President Putin’s nationalist reading of history;
• the issue of Russian passports, vehicle number plates and currency; and
• the planned introduction of the Russian syllabus into Ukrainian schools from September.

The Ukrainian authorities, for their part, have suggested that conducting the planned referendums could be complicated practically both by the low level of support among the Ukrainian population for joining Russia, and by the departure of large numbers of the local population from Russian-held areas. This presumes, a little naively, that the outcome of the referendums has not already been decided in advance, independently of any popular participation. Moreover, it ignores what may be the key purpose of the referendums. That is, rather than aiming to convince Ukrainians or its Western backers of the legitimacy of Russia’s territorial gains—which would be difficult—the referendums are probably mainly intended to bolster official political narratives at home, where the war has been sold as a “special military operation”, designed to free Ukrainians of their oppressive government, and where, most recently, Sergei Shoigu, Russian’s minster of defence, has explained the slow pace of Russia’s military advance in the Donbas by the desire of Russian forces to avoid civilian casualties, contrary to the overwhelming weight of evidence in this phase of the conflict so far.