Sep. 28 () –
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Wednesday that Belgrade will not recognize the decision made by the Russian State Duma regarding the accession referendums held in four regions of eastern Ukraine.
“We protect our own territorial integrity and it is in our interest to protect the territorial integrity of internationally recognized countries and that is the only thing that certainly cannot be changed. These are things of crucial importance to us,” he said, according to the newspaper ‘Politika ‘.
A parliamentary source quoted by the TASS news agency assured that the annexation process for the entry of the territories into Russia could end on September 30. Russian President Vladimir Putin himself could participate in the procedure. “I don’t know if he will participate, but most likely he will,” the source said.
The results of the referendums released by the Russian Electoral Commission, with the counts already completed in most cases, show overwhelming support for joining Russia in the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, with figures ranging between 96.75 and 98.7 percent in favor of ‘yes’.
The Ukrainian authorities and Western governments do not grant any validity to the referendums, while Moscow intends to use them to legitimize its occupation, as it did in 2014 with the Crimean peninsula. The Kremlin has already made it clear that the hypothetical annexation of the four territories, occupied in the framework of the war, would be quick.
