Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a partial military mobilisation in Russia as the war in Ukraine continues for nearly seven months.
World leaders meeting at the United Nations in New York denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Moscow-installed leaders in occupied areas of four Ukrainian regions announced plans to hold referendums on joining Russia in the coming days.
In the apparently coordinated move, pro-Russian figures announced referendums for September 23-27 in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia provinces, representing about 15 percent of Ukrainian territory, or an area about the size of Hungary.
Some pro-Kremlin figures framed the referendums as an ultimatum to the West to accept Russian territorial gains or face an all-out war with a nuclear-armed foe.
Reframing the fighting in occupied territory as an attack on Russia could give Moscow a justification to mobilise its two-million-strong military reserves.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington rejected any such referendums “unequivocally”. French President Emmanuel Macron and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda both described the planned votes as “parody”.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc would not recognise the outcome of the referendums.
US President Joe Biden will try to rally the world against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, saying Moscow’s war against its neighbour violates the tenets of the UN charter.
Fighting
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Putin will only give up his “imperial ambitions” that risk destroying Ukraine and Russia if he recognises he cannot win the war.
In Kherson, where the regional capital is the only major city Russia has so far captured intact since the invasion, Ukraine has launched a major counter-offensive.
Ukraine’s armed forces regain control of the village of Bilohorivka, preparing to retake all of Luhansk province from Russian occupiers, provincial Governor Serhiy Haidai said.
The village is only 10km (6 miles) west of Lysychansk city, which fell to the Russians after weeks of grinding battles in July.
