Russian-backed separatists hail votes on joining Russia

GBNEWS24DESK//

The Moscow-backed leaders of the self-proclaimed, breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) in eastern Ukraine have hailed the beginning of the regions’ referendums on joining Russia.

“We are returning home,” Denis Pushilin, head of the DPR, said. “Donbas is Russia,” he added, citing eastern Ukraine’s industrial heartland, reports Al Jazeera.

Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-backed leader of the LPR, also welcomed the beginning of the voting.

“All of us have been waiting for a referendum on joining Russia for eight long years,” he said. “We have already become part of Russia. There remains only a small matter – to win (the war).”

Engineered outcomes that support the regions joining Russia are almost certain, as is a swiftly choreographed annexation of the occupied territories along the lines of Moscow’s 2014 seizure of the Crimean Peninsula, which took just days.