Annexation of Ukrainian territories illegal under Russian law, says journalist

Read also: Russia's Obscene "Referendums"

“I wonder how they will interpret their own legislation now,” Harmash said.

“First, they don’t fully control the territories in which they allegedly hold a referendum. And secondly, only states that have applied to Russia with a request to be included in the federation can become subjects of the federation. Do we have such a state as Zaporizhzhia or Kherson oblast? I don’t understand.”

However, Harmash has no doubt that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will recognize the “referendum results” and annex those territories regardless of the law.

“If he has already begun to act so quickly and without looking back at the consequences, then I think that he will annex the territories, and declare them his own,” Harmash explained.

“Thus, he expects that the West will be afraid to supply Ukraine with weapons that, from Moscow's point of view, will be used on the territory of Russia, after which Putin may even use nuclear weapons.”

However, Harmash added that this rush towards annexation may actually be beneficial to Ukraine, because it reveals Russia’s true intentions and falsities.

According to Russian propagandist media, Putin will declare the annexation of its currently occupied Ukrainian territories on Sept. 30.

From Sept. 23 to 27, the Russian invaders staged so-called "referendums" in the temporarily occupied parts of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. None of these regions is fully controlled by Russia. Ukraine and the vast majority of Western countries have declared that the results of these sham referendums will not be recognized.

Russian propagandists claimed that over or nearly 90% of the population in Ukraine’s occupied territories had “voted” for annexation to Russia. Numbers of 98.42% were invented for Luhansk Oblast, 93.11% for Zaporizhzhia Oblast, 87.05% for Kherson Oblast, and 99.23% for Donetsk Oblast.

All of these reported “results” are simply made up by the Kremlin, and do not correspond with the actual attitudes of the population in the occupied territory.

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine