KYIV, Ukraine — In a pageantry intended to give Moscow’s land grab a veneer of legitimacy, Russian proxies in occupied areas of Ukraine on Wednesday called on President Vladimir V. Putin to annex the regions .
The annexation demands had an air of order and formality at odds with the chaos Russian leaders face both on the battlefield, where they continue to suffer casualties, and at home, where dozens of Thousands of Russians flee the country to avoid a military project. .
The demands of the Russian proxies followed sham referendums that ended Tuesday in four regions of Ukraine and which, unsurprisingly, aimed to approve voters joining Russia. Many ballots were cast at gunpoint, witnesses said.
A resident of the city of Berislav in the Kherson region scoffed at the idea of wanting to join Russia.
“When they first came to our town, they beat me and took my two cars,” the man, Pavlo, said of the Russian soldiers. “And now they’ve threatened that if I don’t vote they’ll kick me and my family out of our apartment.”
Because of the threats, said Pavlo – who insisted his surname not be made public for fear of reprisals – he voted to join Russia.
The annexation push came as the European Union moved to impose new sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for its latest actions. The draft measures include an oil price cap, trade restrictions and the blacklisting of several people responsible for the referendums.
“Last week, Russia stepped up the invasion of Ukraine to a whole new level,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the bloc’s top official. “We are determined to make the Kremlin pay for this further escalation.”
On February 24, Russian forces crossed the border and began devastating Ukrainian towns. But when it comes to annexation, Russian officials seem to want at least a patina of legality – even as most of the world condemns referendums as blatantly illegal.
Under Russia’s 1993 Constitution, Moscow cannot annex areas of a neighboring country without its consent. So the ongoing moves aim to tick boxes under Russian law governing how to claim land in a neighboring country.
In practice, much of the territory claimed by Russia is not under its control, and the Ukrainian army is shrinking even further.
On Wednesday, Ukraine continued to retake more towns and villages to the east while hammering Russian positions to the south. Destroyed Russian tanks and the bodies of Russian soldiers littered the roadside outside the village of Oskil as Ukrainian soldiers pushed towards the strategically important town of Lyman.
The destruction illustrated the scattered and battered challenges facing Russian forces as they attempt to defend against multiple Ukrainian offensives. Russia’s heavy losses led Mr Putin to take the politically risky decision to order the country’s first mass mobilization since World War II.
But at least 200,000 Russians have left the country since Mr Putin announced the partial military mobilization, according to figures provided by Russia’s neighbours.
Amid setbacks on the battlefield, Russian proxies in Ukraine, with ostensible referendum results in hand, moved quickly to have Moscow incorporate the territories into Russia.
In two of the four provinces where the vote took place, Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, Moscow had established client states eight years ago. It was the leaders of these entities, whose legitimacy is not recognized by much of the world, who made the demands for annexation.
Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said he would leave for Moscow with a document signed by members of an election commission outlining the results to be used in the annexation process, according to Tass, the agency Russian press.
The leader of the Luhansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik, was also reportedly on his way to Moscow, and he posted a video online asking Mr Putin to accept what he called the election results.
In the other two, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south, puppet rulers declared independence from Ukraine in what they said was a first step towards absorption by Russia.
In Kherson, Volodymyr Saldo, the leader put in place by the Russian occupation army last spring, called on Mr Putin on Telegram, the messaging app, to accept the region as part of Russia.
If Russia follows the pattern set when it annexed the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine in 2014, the Kremlin should present local leaders installed by the Russian military as independent representatives of Ukrainians there, and a choreographed process would follow.
The goal this time seems to be to declare parts of Ukraine as Russian territory and then claim that the Ukrainian military is attacking Russia. Annexation would also provide a pretext to recruit Ukrainians from occupied areas and force them to fight other Ukrainians.
By Wednesday evening, the process had advanced, Tass reported. Russian leaders based in Donetsk and Luhansk had sent Putin formal requests for a merger with Russia, the news agency said.
Mr. Putin could suspend the process at any time, possibly to open up prospects for negotiations with the threat of annexation clearly on the table. If he fails to do so, the next step would be to submit the Russian proxy leaders’ appeals to both houses of the Russian parliament for approval. There would be few surprises: both chambers are made up entirely of members loyal to Mr. Putin.
So far, Mr Putin has been coy about his plans. His spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, said the Russian leader traveled from the resort town of Sochi to Moscow on Wednesday but did not anticipate any public comment on the referendums.
Ukraine and its Western allies dismissed Moscow’s actions as political theater and said they remained committed to pushing Russian forces beyond Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.
“None of Russia’s criminal actions will change anything for Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address to the nation.
European officials have also treated with contempt Russian-orchestrated votes to annex parts of Ukraine.
“The EU does not and will never recognize these illegal ‘referendums’ and their falsified result, or any decision taken on the basis of this result, and urges all members of the United Nations to do the same,” the bloc said. in a press release. Wednesday.
In the two weeks since Ukraine drove Russia out of towns and villages in the northeast Kharkiv region, its forces have steadily advanced further south, breaking through Russian defensive lines on the Oskil River.
Ukrainian units are making “slow advances on at least two axes east of the line of the Oskil and Seversky Donets rivers”, the British military intelligence agency said on Wednesday.
But even in retreat, Russian forces continued to unleash a furious barrage of artillery and missiles into towns and cities recently liberated from occupation in the Kharkiv region.
A Russian cruise missile slammed into residential and commercial buildings in the city of Pervomaysk late Monday, killing eight people, including a 15-year-old girl, according to Ukrainian officials.
Andrew E. Kramer and Marc Santora reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Eric Nagourneyfrom New York. Nicole Tung contributed reporting from Oskil, Ukraine, Anna Lukinovaof Kyiv and Monika Pronczuk from Brussels.