Thread by @kosciuszkotanks

Russia is conducting a series of sham #referendums in the Ukrainian Oblasts of #Kherson, #Zaporizhzhia, #Donetsk and #Luhansk, with results expected tomorrow to show overwhelming support for those regions joining Russia.

Just one problem; its complete bullshit. A🧵;

Despite what you may have been told, the four regions in question are majority Ukrainian regions. In the most recent Ukrainian census back in 2001, #Kherson was 82% Ukrainian, #Zaporizhzhia was 71%, #Donetsk was 57%, and #Luhansk was 58%. Self-Identified Russians were a minority.

In #Kherson, only 14% of residents claimed Russian ethnicity. In #Zaporizhzhia it was 25%, and in #Donetsk and #Luhansk it was 38% and 39% respectively.

But that doesn't even tell the whole story.

2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/eng/results/

Not everyone who considered themselves "Russian" supported Ukraine being part of Russia. Indeed, as UCLA Prof. Daniel Treisman (@dstreisman) notes in "The Return: Russia's Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev", a majority of "Russians" in Ukraine supported 🇺🇦 independence in 1991.

The results in favor of 🇺🇦 independence in all four oblasts in 1991 were overwhelming:
#Kherson- 90% for 🇺🇦 (75% of all reg. voters)
#Zaporizhzhia- 90% for 🇺🇦 (73% of reg. voters)
#Donetsk- 83% for 🇺🇦 (64% of reg. voters)
#Luhansk- 83% for 🇺🇦 (68% of reg. voters)

Polling in all 4 oblasts have historically shown little support for joining 🇷🇺. Immediately after #Maidan in 2014, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted a survey into opinions and attitudes of the Ukrainian people in the east. They found:
kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=…

#Kherson- 3.5 % for joining 🇷🇺, 84.6% opposed.
#Zaporizhzhia- 6.2% for joining 🇷🇺, 81.5% opposed.
#Donetsk- 27.5% for joining 🇷🇺, 52.2% opposed.
#Luhansk- 30.3% for joining 🇷🇺, 51.9% opposed.

The war has also dramatically changed the demographics. Since February, 7.5 million 🇺🇦's have been forced out of their homeland. More than 4 million are currently in temporary asylum status throughout the EU.
data.unhcr.org/en/situations/…

Another 8 million are internally displaced within Ukraine. Because #Kherson, #Zaporizhzhia, #Donetsk and #Luhansk are in the war zone, a disproportionate share of the displaced come from one of those four oblasts. Thus, the referendum does not represent everyone in these oblasts.

More recent polling suggests that support for 🇷🇺 is at an all time low. A survey conducted in June 2022 by 🇺🇦 pollster SOCIS captured the historic shifts taking place in Odesa. It found that 78% of Odesa residents expressed pride in Ukrainian identity.

atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainea…

"88% noted a major deterioration in their assessment of 🇷🇺’s leaders and 80% cited a sharp decline in feelings toward Russians in general. Odesa’s dramatic turn away from 🇷🇺 over the past four months has been mirrored throughout Ukraine’s most traditionally pro-Kremlin regions."

This shift is also found in the person of Hennadiy Trukhanov, the mayor of Odesa, who went from controversial pro-Russian demagogue to mortal enemy of the Kremlin once the invasion was launched in February.

kyivindependent.com/uncategorized/…

“My perception has changed, unfortunately. I did not expect that the Russian people would hate us, Ukrainian people, so much,” said Trukhanov. “It’s shocking to me.”

The idea that 🇺🇦's, even Russian speaking 🇺🇦's, would overwhelmingly support 🇷🇺, is simply too absurd for belief.

The right of self-determination is a sacred, fundamental right, as enshrined in the UN Charter. But elections must also be free and fair. Under Putin, elections in Russia have been neither. Elections conducted in territories occupied by Russia are therefore immediately suspect.

For instance, election researchers in 2012 noted that the results for Putin's party in Moscow at polling locations were there were independent observers were significantly lower than in locations without independent observers.

This should surprise nobody.
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

Russia has, after all, a storied history of engaging in sham elections with fraudulent results, as occurred throughout the "Eastern Bloc" countries during the Cold War. These elections, which involved direct force and intimidation, usually resulted in totally fake results.

For instance, in 1947, Soviet-backed parties claimed to have won 90 percent of the vote in Poland, despite internal memos to Stalin acknowledging that the opposition in fact had done better in most areas. Nobody, including the Communists, believed the results were valid.

More recently, election fraud in Belarus, conducted with Russian support, resulted in a victory for Lukashenko, who claimed 80 percent of the votes. The AP has documented countless examples of fraud in these votes.

apnews.com/article/intern…

Reporting on the ground in #Kherson, #Zaporizhzhia, #Donetsk and #Luhansk have shown much to establish that these votes are not at all free and fair. Rather, the people there are being manipulated, if not the votes themselves as well.

🇺🇦's have reported armed soldiers going door-to-door to collect votes for self-styled "referendums" on joining Russia.

"You have to answer verbally and the soldier marks the answer on the sheet and keeps it," one woman in Enerhodar told the BBC.

bbc.com/news/world-eur…

In other locations, armed guards are prominently situated throughout voting centers, and ballots are cast in the open for all to see. Indeed, even Russia's closest European ally, Serbia, has preemptively refused to accept the referendum results.

balkaninsight.com/2022/09/26/ser…

In still another example, pianist Valentina Lisitsa, a well known disciple of Putin, prominently advertised her voting in the referendums. But Lisitsa does not live in the region and was touring in the United States as recently as this April.

Moreover, Russia does not even control all the territory to which these referendums are subject. In #Zaporizhzhia, for instance, the majority of residents remain safe behind Ukrainian lines, where, for obvious reasons, no referendums are being conducted.

Finally, and most fundamentally, the horrible findings in #Bucha and #Izyum lay bare to the world that 🇷🇺 is engaged in a war which includes aspects of ethnic cleansing. Human Rights Watch (@hrw) has documented clear cases of abductions and torture by Russian forces in #Kherson.

The purpose of the abuse seems to be to obtain information and to instill fear so that people will accept the occupation, as Russia seeks to assert sovereignty over occupied territory in violation of international law, Human Rights Watch said.

hrw.org/news/2022/07/2…

In short, the #ReferendumDonbass are, in point of fact, #shamreferendums. Ukrainians on the ground know they are not legit, the West knows they are not legit, and the Russians themselves know they are not legit.

The perpetrators of these illegal votes must be held accountable.

@UnrollHelper unroll please