U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff recently claimed that the majority of people in Ukraine's Russian-occupied territories had participated in referendums and "indicated that they want to be under Russian rule."
Witkoff's claim is false in many ways.
Witkoff referred to the Russian sham vote on the annexation of Ukraine's Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts held in September 2022.
The so-called "referendums" contradicted both Ukrainian and Russian law and were recognized only by two countries — Russia and North Korea, both of which have little knowledge of free elections.
The hastily organized "referendums" were held at gunpoint in the Russian-controlled parts of the regions, with widespread voter intimidation and soldiers going door to door with ballot boxes.
No freedom of speech was allowed, with those holding pro-Ukrainian views being either killed or persecuted. No independent observers were present.
"The most obvious interpretation (of Witkoff's statement) is that he is absolutely incompetent," Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told the Kyiv Independent.
"This just shows the superficiality of Mr. Witkoff's approach and the fact that he did not take sufficient responsibility in preparing for his mission. He could have studied the issue more thoroughly."
The Kyiv Independent
Why were 'referendums' held?
Russia occupied parts of eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in 2014 and seized more territory in the two regions, as well as large parts of southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, following the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Following the start of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Russia hastily organized "annexation referendums" on Sept. 23-27, 2022.
Russia claimed that 99% of the voters supported joining Russia in Donetsk Oblast, 98% in Luhansk Oblast, 87% in Kherson Oblast, and 93% in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
The figures resemble those typically reported by dictatorships, where no genuine voting takes place.
The referendums were illegal under international and Ukrainian law.
They even violated Russian law, which requires a four-month preparation period for referendums. Instead, the votes in the occupied territories were hastily organized within just a few days.
Why were 'referendums' fake?
The sham referendums were held in a conflict zone amid ongoing battles when the safety of voters could not be ensured.
No freedom of speech or freedom of assembly existed during the fake votes, as pro-Ukrainian residents were being persecuted, jailed, tortured, and killed.
There was also no procedure that could guarantee the safety and confidentiality of voting or prevent voting fraud.
Much of the voting was held outside polling stations.
"You have to answer verbally, and the soldier marks the answer on the sheet and keeps it."
There were numerous reports of armed soldiers going door-to-door to collect votes – a procedure that can be interpreted as voter intimidation.
"You have to answer verbally, and the soldier marks the answer on the sheet and keeps it," one woman in the town of Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, told the BBC.
In Kherson, Russian guardsmen stood with a ballot box in the middle of the city to collect people's votes, BBC reported.
Another irregularity is that Russia claimed to have annexed the whole territory of the four regions despite not having full control of any of them. Residents from large parts of the annexed territories were under Ukrainian control and could not participate in the sham vote.
At the time, Russian troops occupied most of Kherson and Luhansk oblasts. However, Russia did not control the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia, and only about 60% of Donetsk Oblast was occupied.
No independent observers or international organizations were present to monitor the fake referendums. Only observers from a handful of Russia-friendly countries and unofficial observers representing fringe pro-Kremlin groups in the West arrived to oversee the sham vote.
The fake referendums were not recognized by international organizations and most countries, even those who call Russia an ally. The only country that recognized the illegal annexation is North Korea, the world's most oppressive state that never had free and fair elections.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the fake vote.
"The charter is clear. Any annexation of a state's territory by another state resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the principles of the UN Charter and international law," he said. "The so-called 'referendums' cannot be called a genuine expression of the popular will."
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) also called the sham votes illegal under both international and Ukrainian law.
Less than two months after the so-called vote, the Ukrainian army liberated the city of Kherson, with thousands of city residents taking to the streets in celebration.
Since then, Russia has been attacking Kherson daily, killing civilians in the city they claim is theirs.
Kateryna Hodunova
How does Russia use fake voting to legitimize its rule?
This is not Russia's first experience with fake voting in the territories it occupies.
Similar procedural irregularities and massive evidence of fraud were reported during the fake referendums on Crimea's annexation and on the independence of Russia's proxies in the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in 2014.
There is also evidence of large-scale vote rigging in Russia's 2024 presidential election in the occupied territories.
Roman Udot, an expert at Russian election watchdog Golos, said in March 2024 that Russian election results in Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts are round figures that do not fit normal distribution.
According to the theory of probability, the chance that these round figures are real results is one out of 400 million in Luhansk Oblast and one out of 4 million in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Udot said.
The results most likely have nothing to do with actual voting and were obtained by multiplying the number of ballots by arbitrary percentages that the Kremlin ordered, according to Udot.
Sources in the occupied territories told the Kyiv Independent that Russian troops forced voters en masse to vote in the 2024 Russian presidential election. Specifically, according to the sources, they caught locals in the streets and forced them to vote outside polling stations.
Meanwhile, the alleged number of voters that the Russian authorities reported in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts exceeds the regions' population.
According to the IStories investigative journalism project, the regions' population amounts to around 3 million people, including 2.5 million adults. Around half of the occupied areas' pre-war population had fled.
Yet, 4.5 million voters were registered in the regions, according to the Russian Central Election Commission.
Kollen Post
Does Russia have any genuine elections or referendums?
Witkoff also appeared to be unaware of the fact that Russia is an authoritarian dictatorship, not an electoral democracy.
Russia hasn't held a democratic, free, and fair election since the 1990s.
The Kremlin's monopoly on television and print publications ensures that the opposition has no access to the media, and independent media are not allowed to operate in Russia.
Opposition candidates are not allowed to run in elections and are sometimes jailed and killed.
In 2020, investigative journalists published evidence that Putin's Federal Security Service had organized an assassination attempt on opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which he barely survived.
Following Navalny's return, he was imprisoned on trumped-up charges and died in prison on Feb. 16, 2024 — not long before the country's presidential election. Independent observers argue that Putin likely either ordered Navalny's murder or indirectly killed him through harsh prison conditions.
Navalny's murder was the latest in a series of murders of opposition politicians. Boris Nemtsov, a famous opposition activist, was murdered in front of the Kremlin in 2015.
Evidence of voting fraud in Russian elections and referendums is also rampant.
The 2024 presidential election was the most rigged in Russia's modern history, according to evidence published by election experts, observers, and media.
Estimates of vote rigging range from at least 22 million votes to about 31.6 million votes, without taking into account online voting and the election at gunpoint in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, according to a mathematical analysis of the election by Russian election expert Sergei Shpilkin and Novaya Gazeta Europe.
If these results are included, voting fraud could have amounted to up to around 40 million votes, or 46% of the electoral base.
Apart from regions where votes are rigged, there are also regions where election results are determined randomly without any regard to actual voting, Oreshkin told the Kyiv Independent.
"There are so-called electoral sultanates — that is, places where, in the European sense of the word, elections have no meaning at all because whatever the boss says, that's what the result will be," he said.
"Around 15 to 20 regions have become electoral sultanates — places like Chechnya, Dagestan, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan."
Karol Luczka
