Voting in referendums in Ukraine aimed at annexing territory to Russia yesterday entered a fourth day, after the US warned of “catastrophic consequences” if Moscow used nuclear weapons to protect any annexed regions.
The votes in four eastern Ukrainian regions, which Kyiv and the West regard as a sham, saw Russian-backed officials carry ballot boxes from door to door, accompanied by security officials, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said.
Gaidai said residents’ names were taken down if they failed to vote correctly or refused to cast a ballot.
Photo: AFP
“A woman walks down the street with what looks like a karaoke microphone telling everyone to take part in the referendum,” he said in an interview posted online. “Representatives of the occupation forces are going from apartment to apartment with ballot boxes. This is a secret ballot, right?”
Russian forces control territory in the four regions that represents about 15 percent of Ukraine, or roughly the size of Portugal. It would add to Crimea, an area nearly the size of Belgium, that Russia claims to have annexed in 2014.
The Russian parliament could move to formalize the annexations within days.
By incorporating the areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia into Russia, Moscow could portray efforts to retake them as attacks on Russia itself, a warning to Kyiv and its Western allies.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the US would respond to any Russian use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and had spelled out to Moscow the “catastrophic consequences” it would face.
“If Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia,” Sullivan told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “The United States will respond decisively.”
The latest US warning followed Wednesday’s thinly veiled nuclear threat by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said Russia would use any weapons to defend its territory.
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov made the point more directly at a news conference on Saturday.
He was speaking after a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, in which he repeated Moscow’s false claims to justify the invasion that the elected government in Kyiv was illegitimately installed and filled with neo-Nazis.
Asked if Russia would have grounds for using nuclear weapons to defend annexed regions, Lavrov said Russian territory, including that “further enshrined” in Russia’s constitution in the future, was under the “full protection of the state.”
British Prime Minister Liz Truss said in an interview broadcast on CNN on Sunday: “We should not be listening to his [Putin’s] saber-rattling and his bogus threats.”
“Instead, what we need to do is continue to put sanctions on Russia and continue to support the Ukrainians,” she said.
Heavy fighting saw more than 40 towns hit by Russian shelling, Ukraine officials said yesterday.
In the 24 hours to yesterday morning, Russian forces launched five missile and 12 airstrikes, as well as more than 83 attacks from multiple rocket-propelled grenades, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said.
More than 40 settlements in all were affected by enemy fire, mostly in southern and southeast Ukraine.
Two drones launched by Russian forces into Ukraine’s Odesa region hit military objects, causing a fire and setting off ammunition, the Ukrainian southern command said yesterday.
“As a result of a large-scale fire and the detonation of ammunition, the evacuation of the civilian population was organized,” it said on messaging app Telegram.
“Preliminarily, there have been no casualties.” the southern command said.
Countering Russian attacks, Ukraine’s air force launched 33 strikes, hitting 25 “enemy” areas, the general staff added.
Reuters could not independently verify the accounts.
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
RSS