In some settlements of the occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukrainians who refused to participate in the sham referendum were evicted from their homes, Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Hanna Maliar reported during a briefing on September 29.
“In some temporarily occupied settlements of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, the Russian occupation administration resorted to evicting the civilian population from their own homes, namely those who refused to vote.
A typical example of the forced participation of the population in the so-called ‘referendums’ is the fact that from September 23 to 27, the so-called mobile groups of precinct election commissions moved through the streets of temporarily occupied Ukrainian cities and towns under the protection of armed Russian servicemen, who, threatening with weapons, handed ballots to all passers-by and included them in the lists of voting participants,” Maliar said.
- On September 27, the Central Committee of the Russian Federation announced the first “results” of a sham referendum on the territory of Russia, and allegedly the vast majority of voters “voted” for the entry of the occupied territories of Ukraine into the Russian Federation.
- The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, condemned the holding of illegal “referendums” in the occupied territories of Ukraine and the falsification of their results.
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized that if Russia tries to annex them on the basis of the so-called “referendums” in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, this means closing any negotiations with Moscow.
