Russia is poised to formally annex areas of Ukraine where it has military control after referendums yesterday reportedly endorsed Moscow’s rule.
However, the ballots were widely discredited and earned the Kremlin no relief from international pressure over its assault on its neighbor.
Pro-Moscow administrations of all four occupied regions of southern and eastern Ukraine on Tuesday said that their residents voted to join Russia in five days of Kremlin-orchestrated balloting.
Photo: AFP
Election officials said that 93 percent of the ballots cast in the Zaporizhzhia region supported annexation, as did 87 percent in Kherson, 98 percent in Luhansk and 99 percent in Donetsk.
Officials in the occupied regions yesterday said that they would ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to incorporate them into Russia.
However, Western countries dismissed the ballots as a meaningless pretense staged by Moscow in an attempt to legitimize its invasion of Ukraine.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Tuesday that Washington would propose a UN Security Council resolution to condemn Russia’s “sham” vote.
The resolution would also urge member states not to recognize any altered status of Ukraine and demand that Russia withdraws its troops, she wrote on Twitter.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell yesterday called the ballots “illegal” and described the results as “falsified.”
“This is another violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty territorial integrity, systematic abuses of human rights,” Borrell wrote on Twitter.
In Kyiv, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the ballots were “a propaganda show,” and “null and worthless.”
“Forcing people in these territories to fill out some papers at the barrel of a gun is yet another Russian crime in the course of its aggression against Ukraine,” the ministry said in a statement.
It asked the EU, NATO and G7 nations to step up pressure on Russia through new sanctions, and significantly increase military aid.
The Kremlin remained unmoved amid the hail of criticism.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that at the very least Russia intended to drive Ukrainian forces out of the eastern Donetsk region.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS