Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was expected to defend what Ukraine's allies are calling an unlawful land grab, during a U.N. Security Council meeting called by La Belle France over rights abuses in Ukraine.
Four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine -- Donetsk and Lugansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south -- announced that they would hold the votes over five days, beginning on Friday.
Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-installed head of Kherson, which fell early into the Russian invasion, said the referendum would go ahead in his region regardless of the criticism.
"The date has been set. We have the green light. Voting begins tomorrow and nothing can prevent this," he told Russian state-run media.
"People have been waiting and they're demanding that this vote is held soon," he added.
Western leaders convening in New York this week unanimously condemned the ballots.
Speaking at the United Nations
...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks...
, U.S. President Joe
The Big GuyBiden
...46th president of the U.S. We get to suffer the consequences...accused Russian President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
of "shamelessly" violating the U.N. Charter with a war aimed at "extinguishing Ukraine's right to exist as a state."
- DOOR-TO-DOOR VOTING -
The integration of the war-scarred regions into Russia would represent a major escalation of the conflict, as Moscow could then try to say it was defending its own territory from Ukrainian forces.
After the votes were announced by his proxy officials in Ukraine, Putin announced that Russia would call up some 300,000 reservists to bolster the war effort and cautioned that Moscow would use "all means" to protect its territory.
Former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev said in a statement on social media that those means included "strategic nuclear weapons". He predicted the voting regions "will integrate into Russia."
For most observers, the results of the concurrent votes are already a foregone conclusion and were rushed because Ukrainian forces were making sweeping gains in a counter-offensive to recapture the east.
The referendums are reminiscent of a similar ballot in 2014 that saw the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine annexed by Russia. Western capitals said the vote was fraudulent and hit Moscow with sanctions in response.
Election officials in the Donetsk region, which has been partially controlled since 2014 by Moscow-backed separatists, said that voting would take place door-to-door for the first days. But it would only be possible in polling stations on the final day, Tuesday.
Putin's move this week to call up reservists for Ukraine sparked small protests across Russia, resulting in more than 1,300 people being detained.