Kyiv: Russia on Friday will formally annex parts of Ukraine where separation referendums received approval, the Kremlin's spokesman said, confirming the expectations of Ukrainian and Western officials who have denounced the Moscow-managed votes as illegal, forced and rigged.
Four regions of Ukraine Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be folded into Russia during a Kremlin ceremony attended by President Vladimir Putin, spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.
Peskov said the pro-Moscow administrators of those regions would sign treaties to join Russia during the ceremony at the Kremlin's St. George's Hall.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called an emergency meeting of the National Security and Defence Council for Friday, apparently in response to the Russian move.
The official annexation was widely expected following the votes that wrapped up Tuesday in the areas under Russian occupation and the administration of Moscow-installed officials.
Ukraine's supporters in the West have described the stage-managed referendums on living under Russian rule as a bald-faced land grab based on lies.
It's absolutely unacceptable," said Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, whose country currently holds the European Union presidency.
We reject such one-sided annexation based on a fully falsified process with no legitimacy.
Lipavsky described the pro-Russia referendums as theatre play" and insisted the regions remain "Ukrainian territory.
Armed Russian troops at went door-to-door with election officials to collect ballots in five days of voting that produced suspiciously high margins in favour of joining Russia.
Ukrainian officials said the military escorts also took down the names of residents who voted against annexation.
Moscow-installed administrations in the four regions of southern and eastern Ukraine claimed Tuesday night that 93% of the ballots cast in the Zaporizhzhia region supported annexation, as did 87% in Kherson, 98% in Luhansk and 99% in Donetsk.
Under threats and sometimes even (at) gunpoint, people are being taken out of their homes or workplaces to vote in glass ballot boxes, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at a conference in Berlin. This is the opposite of free and fair elections, Baerbock said. And this is the opposite of peace. It's dictated peace. As long as this Russian diktat prevails in the occupied territories of Ukraine, no citizen is safe. No citizen is free.
The votes and the Kremlin's quick move to incorporate territory seized during Russia's war in Ukraine came after a Ukrainian counteroffensive this month dealt Moscow's forces heavy battlefield setbacks.
Putin last week ordered a troop mobilisation that the Russian defense minister said would put 300,000 reservists into active military duty.
In response, tens of thousands of Russian men have left the country. Putin and other Russian officials also have threatened to resort to nuclear weapons to protect Russian territory, including any annexed land.
On the battlefront Thursday, Ukrainian authorities said Russian shelling killed at least eight civilians in the past 24 hours, including a child, and wounded scores of others. A 12-year-old girl was pulled alive out of rubble after an attack on Dnipro, officials said.
The rescuers have taken her from under the rubble, she was asleep when the Russian missile hit, said local administrator Valentyn Reznichenko.
A Russian rocket attack on Kramatorsk, a city in the eastern Donetsk region still held by Ukraine, wounded 11 people and inflicted damage on the city, Mayor Oleksandr Honcharenko said.
More fighting near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant - Europe's biggest - was another source of concern.
Russian forces occupy the plant, which is Europe's biggest nuclear power station, but Ukrainian technicians still are running it.