Gerson’s vice president, Yuri Sobolevsky, called his Telegram account a “theatre of absurdity.”
“Electoral commissions travel the region with armed soldiers and try in every way to avoid voters’ homes. Some have already been unlucky twice: they had to fill out the ballot and vote a second time,” he condemned.
According to regional officials, Russian troops prove that all family members have voted, or else force one of the family members to vote for each one.
The self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as the pro-Russian authorities of Kherson and Zaporizhia, began a referendum on joining Russia on Friday, which will end on Tuesday.
Moscow has already said it will respect the outcome of the referendum, which Ukraine and much of the international community, including the US, NATO or the EU, will not.
Pro-Russian authorities in Crimea held a referendum to join Russia in 2014, which gave Russian President Vladimir Putin the legal mandate to annex the peninsula into the territory of the Russian Federation.
On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine.
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