Like everything else Putin or his puppets say, that statement, without a hint of a doubt, was a complete and utter lie. That is not anything new or surprising, those are just facts.

Russia is now, of course, hastily trying to organise these so-called referendums as soon as possible. The rush is due to a lot of their weapon storage areas and military bases being heavily bombed lately.

Putin is desperately trying to obtain at least 100 drones from Iran and carry out mobilisation in Russia without actually announcing it; thus just recently he proclaimed that they would be “expanding the army”. Very sudden and very desperate for a country that has “everything under control and [a] special military operation going according to plan”.

Just so you know, this genius plan includes Putin’s army gaining 10km of territory in Donbas in the past month, sinking of the fleet’s flagship, having 46,000 of your army in body bags, constant bombings in Crimea, not to mention tens of thousands wounded and literally thousands of items of weaponry and military machinery lost. To add insult to injury, count in unprecedented sanctions and isolation and you have yourself a perfect plan!

Although, the good thing is, because “everything is going as planned” Russian terrorists haven’t actually been able to hold referendums yet. Russians are now desperately trying to prepare for September referendums and we are seeing evidence of that in the now occupied territories. But, before I get into that, I want to tell you a few facts about the referendums held in 2014.

First and foremost: so-called Luhansk People’s Republic, Donetsk People’s Republic, and Crimea referendums were all held at gunpoint. Every single one was held on territories occupied by Russian soldiers. Though then, Putin lied that there weren’t any Russian military present. 

Second, unlike Russia, Ukraine has democratic elections and we’ve voted for a lot of presidents and members of our parliament over the past 31 years. So, when the people of Crimea did vote in democratic elections, the party of Sergey Aksyonov — who Putin installed in 2014 as the head of Russian-occupied Crimea because “people wanted him in charge” — won a bit above 4% of Crimea votes in the last election before the occupation. Now that is a fact.

Third, more than two million people left occupied Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea. Thus, one can conclude that more than two million Ukrainians left everything behind and risked their lives to run from Putin’s killers in 2014, the people he claimed he was “saving”.

Last, the referendums were a massive circus, with one poorly worded question in the ballots, armed Russian soldiers and far-right politicians, like, for example, Belgian Luc Michel being the “international observers”. The latter was claimed by Russian propaganda TV to be an “observer from OCSE [Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe]” when that organisation neither “observed nor recognized the referendum”. We all know this circus didn’t do any good and Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are recognised by the international community as Ukrainian territory.

And now we’re in 2022 and unpunished evil has come back to try to steal more of our land. The only thing that is baffling: all the parts of different countries Russia has occupied over the past couple of decades have turned into literal wastelands. Every single one. One worse than the other.

Ukrainian Donetsk was an absolute dream, a gorgeous city with amazing hotels, state-of-the-art infrastructure, beautiful parks, expensive cars and luxury hotels. People gladly held international meetings, festivals and sporting events in Donetsk.

Donetsk had a huge airport and the world-recognised Donbas Arena where all of the biggest stars came to perform. Now, the arena, built to accommodate 52,000 people, and the stage where Rihanna or Jenifer Lopez held their shows, is worth nothing. It looks like scenery from a Zombie apocalypse movie. And that is exactly what all territories “saved” by Russia look like. So if they think anyone in the world will vote to downgrade their modern living to a Russian wasteland, they need to think again.

Now, we know from our and our partners’ intelligence data that Russians are doing everything they can to hold more of these sham referendums on the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

We also know that they are scrambling to get things done, despite their efforts to bring as many people from occupied Crimea into newly occupied territories to create propaganda videos of “Ukrainians” voting, they know that the information about the non-existent turnout will leak. We also know that they keep threatening people with violence; violence against their kids.

There have been a lot of kidnappings of Ukrainian activists in the occupied territories. They plan to try to hold this sham of an event on the 11 of 14 September. Our government has asked Ukrainians to evacuate as soon as possible; that’s very important for our armed forces. Unfortunately, Russia doesn’t let people out of the occupied cities. People now need to stand in traffic under the summer sun for up to 10 days for a chance to get out of Russian-controlled territories. Of course, not everyone can sit in a car for 10 days in a heat wave.

Ukraine would do everything possible to first protect its citizens, and second, get back our territories. We now know they are terrorists, killers, rapists and paedophiles and they would be treated as such. Russians can hold all the referendums they want, and Ukrainians will keep fighting for their people and their land. DM