Ukrainians evicted from their homes for refusing to participate in Russia-organised sham referendums
UKRAINSKA PRAVDA — THURSDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 2022, 15:58
Ukrainians who had refused to participate in the sham referendum were evicted from their homes in some settlements of the occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
Source: Hanna Maliar, Deputy Defence Minister of Ukraine, during a briefing on 29 September
Quote from Maliar: "In some of the 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 sham referendums is the fact that from 23 to 27 September, 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 handed ballots to all passers-by and included them in the lists of voting participants, threatening [them] with weapons".
Details: Maliar called the sham referendums initiated by Russia in the occupied territories of Ukraine "worthless".
Background:
- On 27 September, the Central Electoral Commission of the Russian Federation announced the first results of the sham referendum on the territory of Russia. The vast majority of people allegedly voted for the accession of the occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
- Head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, condemned the holding of illegal sham referendums in the occupied territories of Ukraine and the falsification of their results.
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stressed that if Russia used the sham referendums in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine as pretext to annex those territories, it would foreclose all possibilities of negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.
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