Referendum in Ukrainian Region: A success for Russia I
By Dr.Syed Mehboob
Research Scholar, Analyst
Donbas is a historical, cultural and economic region in eastern Ukraine. Like the Crimean Peninsula, the administrative regions( oblasts) of Luhansk and Donetsk are regions where a particularly large proportion of the population speaks Russian as its mother tongue as is ethnically Russian. The Donbas is Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Donbas is the heart of Ukraine. The Coalfield , which extends across the east to Russian territory, is the fourth-largest in Europe, with extractable reserves estimated at over 10 billion tons. These areas produce about 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product ( GDP) and about a quarter a Ukraine’s export volume.
A referendum in these areas including Donbas and voting concluded in Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and a great victory for Russia that 99.23% of the people of the area chosen reunification with Russia. Some 98.42 % of voters in Ukraine’s separatists controlled Luhansk region voted in favour of joining Russia. About 87.05 % of voters in Ukraine’s Kherson region voted in favour of joining Russia while 93.11 % of voters in Ukraine’s Zaporozhye region supported joining Russia.
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Signing of treaties on occasion of Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republic and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions to Russia.
A ceremony for signing the treaties on the occasion of Donetsk People’s Republic , the Lugansk People’s Republic , The Zaporozhye region and Kherson region to the Russian Federation took place in the grand Kremlin palace ‘s St George Hall.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin , Citizens of Russia, Citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republic, residents of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions , deputies of the State Duma, Senators of the Russian Federation, are were gathered to celebrate this great victory of Russia, its people and the Russian speaking people of the areas joined Russia by Referendum. The ballot has been counted and the result has been announced. The President Vladimir Putin said, “Today we will sign treaties on the accession of the Donetsk People Republic Lugansk, Peoples Republic Zaporozhye region and Kherson region to the Russian federation. I have no doubt that the federal assembly will support the constitutional laws on the accession of Russia and the establishment of four regions our new constituent entities of Russian Federation, because this is the will of millions of people (applause). It is undoubtedly their right and inherent right sealed in article one of the UN charter, which directly states the principle of equal rights and self- determination of people. I repeat, it is an inherent right of the people. It is based on our historical affinity, and it is that right that led generation of our predecessors, those who built and defended Russia for centuries since the period of ancient Rus, to victory. Here in Novorossiya, [Pyotr] Rumyantsev, [Alexander] Suvorov and [Fyodor] Ushakov fought their battles, and Catherine the Great and [Grigory] Potyomkin founded new cities. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought here to the bitter end during the Great Patriotic War.
He further said,” We will always remember the heroes of the Russian Spring, those who refused to accept the neo-Nazi coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014, all those who died for the right to speak their native language, to preserve their culture, traditions and religion, and for the very right to live. We remember the soldiers of Donbas, the martyrs of the “Odessa Khatyn,” the victims of inhuman terrorist attacks carried out by the Kiev regime. We commemorate volunteers and militiamen, civilians, children, women, senior citizens, Russians, Ukrainians, people of various nationalities; popular leader of Donetsk Alexander Zakharchenko; military commanders Arsen Pavlov and Vladimir Zhoga, Olga Kochura and Alexei Mozgovoy; prosecutor of the Lugansk Republic Sergei Gorenko; paratrooper Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov and all our soldiers and officers who died a hero’s death during the special military operation. They are heroes. (Applause.) Heroes of great Russia. Please join me in a minute of silence to honour their memory. There was a minute silence.
Behind the choice of millions of residents in the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics, in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, is our common destiny and thousand-year history. People have passed this spiritual connection on to their children and grandchildren. Despite all the trials they endured, they carried the love for Russia through the years. This is something no one can destroy. That is why both older generations and young people – those who were born after the tragic collapse of the Soviet Union – have voted for our unity, for our common future.
In 1991 in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, representatives of the party elite of that time made a decision to terminate the Soviet Union, without asking ordinary citizens what they wanted, and people suddenly found themselves cut off from their homeland. This tore apart and dismembered our national community and triggered a national catastrophe. Just like the government quietly demarcated the borders of Soviet republics, acting behind the scenes after the 1917 revolution, the last leaders of the Soviet Union, contrary to the direct expression of the will of the majority of people in the referendum of 1991, destroyed our great country, and simply made the people in the former republics face this as an accomplished fact.
I can admit that they didn’t even know what they were doing and what consequences their actions would have in the end. But it doesn't matter now. There is no Soviet Union anymore; we cannot return to the past. Actually, Russia no longer needs it today; this isn’t our ambition. But there is nothing stronger than the determination of millions of people who, by their culture, religion, traditions, and language, consider themselves part of Russia, whose ancestors lived in a single country for centuries. There is nothing stronger than their determination to return to their true historical homeland.
For eight long years, people in Donbas were subjected to genocide, shelling and blockades; in Kherson and Zaporozhye, a criminal policy was pursued to cultivate hatred for Russia, for everything Russian. Now too, during the referendums, the Kiev regime threatened schoolteachers, women who worked in election commissions with reprisals and death. Kiev threatened millions of people who came to express their will with repression. But the people of Donbas, Zaporozhye and Kherson weren’t broken, and they had their say.I want the Kiev authorities and their true handlers in the West to hear me now, and I want everyone to remember this: the people living in Lugansk and Donetsk, in Kherson and Zaporozhye have become our citizens, forever.
We call on the Kiev regime to immediately cease fire and all hostilities; to end the war it unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this, as we have said more than once. But the choice of the people in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson will not be discussed. The decision has been made, and Russia will not betray it. Kiev’s current authorities should respect this free expression of the people’s will; there is no other way. This is the only way to peace. We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people. This is the great liberating mission of our nation.
We will definitely rebuild the destroyed cities and towns, the residential buildings, schools, hospitals, theatres and museums. We will restore and develop industrial enterprises, factories, infrastructure, as well as the social security, pension, healthcare and education systems. We will certainly work to improve the level of security. Together we will make sure that citizens in the new regions can feel the support of all the people of Russia, of the entire nation, all the republics, territories and regions of our vast Motherland. Today I would like to address our soldiers and officers who are taking part in the special military operation, the fighters of Donbas and Novorossiya, those who went to military recruitment offices after receiving a call-up paper under the executive order on partial mobilization, and those who did this voluntarily, answering the call of their hearts. I would like to address their parents, wives and children, to tell them what our people are fighting for, what kind of enemy we are up against, and who is pushing the world into new wars and crises and deriving blood-stained benefits from this tragedy. Our compatriots, our brothers and sisters in Ukraine who are part of our united people have seen with their own eyes what the ruling class of the so-called West have prepared for humanity as a whole. They have dropped their masks and shown what they are really made of.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the West decided that the world and all of us would permanently accede to its dictates. In 1991, the West thought that Russia would never rise after such shocks and would fall to pieces on its own. This almost happened. We remember the horrible 1990s, hungry, cold and hopeless. But Russia remained standing, came alive, grew stronger and occupied its rightful place in the world.
Meanwhile, the West continued and continues looking for another chance to strike a blow at us, to weaken and break up Russia, which they have always dreamed about, to divide our state and set our peoples against each other, and to condemn them to poverty and extinction. They cannot rest easy knowing that there is such a great country with this huge territory in the world, with its natural wealth, resources and people who cannot and will not do someone else’s bidding.
The West is ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system which allows it to live off the world, to plunder it thanks to the domination of the dollar and technology, to collect an actual tribute from humanity, to extract its primary source of unearned prosperity, the rent paid to the hegemon. The preservation of this annuity is their main, real and absolutely self-serving motivation. This is why total de-sovereignisation is in their interest. This explains their aggression towards independent states, traditional values and authentic cultures, their attempts to undermine international and integration processes, new global currencies and technological development centers they cannot control. It is critically important for them to force all countries to surrender their sovereignty to the United States.