21 de set. de 2022 With no end in sight to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is currently preparing to stage fake referendums in occupied regions of the country as a prelude to annexation. While there is little danger of the international community officially recognizing the results of such obviously rigged and illegitimate ballots, Russia’s referendum plans nevertheless have the potential to significantly escalate the war and must be prevented from proceeding. #eudebates the unique initiative aiming to promote debate, dialogue, knowledge, participation and communication among citizens. #PUTIN #war #EuropeanUnion #VonderLeyen #putinswar #Russia #putinspeech #NATO At present, Russia appears intent on following the Crimean scenario deployed eight years ago. In February 2014, Russian troops seized control of the Ukrainian peninsula before hurriedly staging a fig leaf referendum in an attempt to justify the region’s fully fledged annexation and incorporation into the Russian Federation. Given the success of the Crimean takeover, it is easy to understand why the Kremlin sees it as a model worth repeating. When Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, the West offered only a meek response to what was then the most significant violation of European borders since WWII. At the time, international institutions and Western leaders confined themselves to public expressions of concern. Behind the scenes, the Russian annexation was unofficially accepted as irreversible. Western countries applied weak sanctions against Russia over Crimea while adopting a business as usual approach to relations with the Kremlin. This included the launch of major new joint projects such as the infamous Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Failure to hold Russia accountable for the occupation of Crimea and Moscow’s subsequent military intervention in eastern Ukraine paved the way for the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After failing to capture Kyiv during the initial phase of the current invasion, Russia retreated from northern Ukraine in April 2022 and changed tactics. Instead of installing a puppet regime in the Ukrainian capital, the Kremlin aims to annex the areas of southern and eastern Ukraine under Russian control. With the Ukrainian military now receiving growing quantities of advanced weapons from the country’s Western partners and successfully eroding Russia’s offensive capabilities, the invasion has largely stalled. As a result, Moscow seems to be in a hurry to cement its gains. Rigged referendums are central to these efforts. Given the sheer scale of the war crimes being committed by the Russian military in Ukraine, it is easy to be dismissive about the significance of the Kremlin’s plans to hold fake referendums. However, if these stage-managed votes proceed, they will likely lead to even more misery for the millions of Ukrainians currently living under Russian occupation. In the short term, annexation would allow the Kremlin to militarize occupied areas of Ukraine and use the captive population as cannon fodder in the war against their fellow Ukrainians. Large numbers of the civilian population would be forcibly deported to the most far-flung regions of Russia, while Russians would be encouraged to replace them and settle in Ukraine. The Kremlin would also exploit rigged referendums to extend its nuclear umbrella to newly annexed regions of Ukraine under the guise of defending Russia’s territorial integrity. Moscow would then use this cynical argument to pressure the West into discouraging President Zelenskyy from undertaking further military action to liberate southern and eastern Ukraine. In the long term, the annexation of large swathes of Ukraine would create major problems for Russia’s future as a modern state. Any new Russian leader would face the dilemma of either acknowledging the annexations as illegal or continuing Putin’s imperial policies of nineteenth century-style colonization. Attempts to withdraw from annexed regions of Ukraine would risk large-scale domestic unrest within Russia itself and would open up a Pandora’s box of unwelcome political and economic consequences while also necessitating changes to the Russian Constitution. Alternatively, a continuation of today’s imperialism in Ukraine would condemn Russia to further isolation as an irredeemably authoritarian and revisionist power. The annexation issue would remain an obstacle to any thaw between Moscow and the democratic world. https://dzen.ru/video/watch/6335b3ce1cd28420927fd01a