Ukraine cities amid Kremlin-staged vote Russian forces shell

 In Ukrainian cities it took place to create a pretext for their annexation by Moscow Russian forces launched new strikes in occupied regions of Ukraine as Kremlin-orchestrated votes.

The latest Russian shelling killed at least three people and wounded 19, Ukraine’s presidential office said. A Russian missile hit an apartment building in the city of Zaporizhzhia, killing one person and injuring seven others, the Ukrainian governor of Zaporizhzhia, Oleksandr Starukh, on joining Russia said one of the regions where Moscow-installed officials organized referendums.

In the south Kherson and Zaporizhzhia that began Friday and in the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the five-day voting, and, election officials accompanied set up mobile polling stations, by police officers carrying ballots to homes citing safety reasons. When balloting will be held on Tuesday the votes are set to wrap up at polling stations.

The referendums have no legal force both Ukraine and its Western allies say. Stretching from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula, they alleged the votes were an illegitimate attempt by Moscow to slice away a large part of Ukraine. Before Moscow annexed it a similar referendum took place in Crimea in 2014, a move that most of the world considered illegal.

“The second half has been cheated and scared half of the population fled the Donetsk region because of Russian terror and constant shelling, voting against Russia with their feet”, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said. 

To undermine the referendums and to share information about the people conducting “this farce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians in occupied regions.” To try to avoid it, he also called on people for the partial troop mobilization Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday or to sabotage and desert the Russian military if they ended up in the ranks.

Zelenskyy said, “If you provide us with any important information about the occupiers – their bases, headquarters, warehouses with ammunition, you will get into the Russian army, sabotage any activity of the enemy, hinder any Russian operations”.

The voting “looked more like an opinion survey under the gun barrels”, Serhiy Haidai, Luhansk Gov. said by adding that the Moscow-backed local authorities were sending armed escorts to accompany election officials and to note the names of individuals who voted against joining Russia.

To protest the referendum, covering themselves in Ukrainian flags and carrying posters “Mariupol is Ukraine”, from the Russia-occupied city of Mariupol about 100 people, in the Ukrainian capital, which is part of the Donetsk region, gathered . 

Vladyslav Kildishov who helped organize the rally said “They ruined the city, killed thousands of people, and now they are doing some kind of profanation over there,”.

Elina Sytkova, 21, a demonstrator who has many relatives left in Mariupol even though the city spent months under bombardment, said the vote was “like a joke, because it’s the same as it was in Crimea, meaning it’s fake and not real.” “It’s an illusion of choice when there isn’t any.” she added.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that the partial mobilization ordered by Putin aimed to add about 300,000 troops, but the presidential decree keeps the door open for a broader call-up.

Across Russia's 11 time zones, before being rounded up for service amid fears that a wider call-up might follow, men hugged their weeping family members. Some media reports claimed that the Russian authorities actually plan to mobilize more than 1 million, the allegations denied by the Kremlin.

Across Russia on Saturday and detained more than 100 participants police moved quickly to disperse more demonstrations against the mobilization that were held in several cities. On Wednesday over 1,300 protesters were arrested during anti-war demonstrations, and many of them immediately received call-up summons.

To leave the country many Russian men tried desperately, buying up scarce and exorbitantly priced plane tickets. Creating lines of traffic hours or even days long at some borders, thousands more fled by car.

To cast the seven-month war as a “special military operation” that doesn’t interfere with the lives of most Russians, the mobilization marked a sharp shift from Putin’s effort. The unpopularity of the war, the massive exodus underlined and fuelled public outrage that could erode his grip on power.

The authorities announced that many of those working in high tech, communications or finance will be exempt, moving to assuage public fears over the call-up.

For hastily sweeping up random people to meet mobilization targets instead of calling up people with military skills who had served recently the head of a top state-controlled TV station harshly criticized military authorities, as Putin promised and in a signal that the Kremlin was getting worried about the spreading panic and chaos caused by the mobilization.

She said by rounding up those who weren’t supposed to be drafted RT chief Margarita Simonyan lashed out at military conscription offices for “driving people mad”. “It’s as if they were tasked by Kyiv to do that”.

Ramzan Kadyrov, The Kremlin-backed regional leader of Chechnya, suggested that Moscow should more broadly engage personnel from law enforcement agencies in the fighting, who sent his forces to fight in Ukraine and repeatedly called for tougher action.

With the military would make a much better-trained and motivated fighting force he denounced those fleeing the mobilization as cowards and argued that police and various paramilitary agencies number a total of 5 million together.

“To fulfil their duties if we leave 50% of the personnel, 2.5 million others will blow any Western army away and we won’t need any reservists”, Kadyrov said. 

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