216 days of war in Ukraine.
The last of the five days of voting in the referendums on joining Russia began today in the territories controlled by the Russian Army in eastern and southern Ukraine, the official Russian agency TASS reported. The consultations, to which Ukraine and practically the entire international community deny any legitimacy, are taking place in the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, in the east, and the territories of the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, in the south, under the control of the Russian troops.
For the first time since last Friday, voting takes place at polling stationssince during the previous four days they were carried out in improvised places or in the homes of citizens, a procedure that was argued with the need to guarantee the safety of the voters.
According to TASS, in the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, 450 and 461 polling stations were opened, respectively. For their part, the pro-Russian authorities installed in the Zaporizhia region, which the Russian Army controls in more than one 70 percentannounced the opening of 349 polling stations, while the Kherson region, occupied by more than 90 percent, reported the creation of 198 electoral commissions.
The referendums were declared valid by their organizers, since according to their data more than 50 percent of the electoral census participated.
The pro-Russians reported that the polling stations opened at 08:00 local time (05:00 GMT) and that they will remain open until 16:00 (13:00 GMT), after which the count will begin.
