Days of voting in provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to end on Tuesday; Japan foreign minister says consul Tatsunori Motoki was blindfolded and physically restrained
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Russian media have announced that “referendums” in four occupied territories of Ukraine are “valid” a day before voting ended, claiming the turnout had already passed 50%. Analysts have called those turnout claims “flagrantly falsified”. Russian state media agency TASS said that on Monday 26, voter turnout was 86.89% in Donetsk, 83.61% in Luhansk, in the 63.58% in Kherson, and 66.43% in Zaporizhzhia.
Voting is due to end today. The “referendums” have been repeatedly condemned by Ukraine and the west as a “sham”. Thinktank the Institute for the Study of War said:
Turnout even in a free and fair referendum, rather than the Kremlin’s sham plebiscite, would almost certainly be much lower… Even in peacetime, Ukrainians do not turn out to vote at rates as high as what Russian occupation officials are reporting; the first round of Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election saw only a 62.8% turnout.”
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