Russia plans to annex much of eastern Ukraine later this month, a senior U.S. official warned, and the Mariupol steel mill that is the city’s last stronghold of resistance came under renewed assault a day after the first evacuation of civilians from the plant.
Michael Carpenter, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Monday that the U.S. believes the Kremlin also will recognize the southern city of Kherson as an independent republic. Neither move would be recognized by the United States or its allies, he said.
Russia is planning to hold sham referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that would “try to add a veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy” and attach the entities to Russia, Carpenter said. He also said there were signs that Russia would engineer an independence vote in Kherson.
Mayors and local legislators there have been abducted, internet and cellphone service has been severed and a Russian school curriculum will soon be imposed, Carpenter said. Ukraine’s government says Russia has introduced its ruble as currency there.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia recognized the independence of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic a few days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in late February. Moscow-backed separatists in the regions have been fighting against Ukrainian forces since 2014.
Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 just hours after 97 percent of voters in a referendum there approved seceding from Ukraine. The vote was criticized as fraudulent, and much of the world has since refused to recognize Crimea as part of the Russian Federation.
Russia had no immediate response to the allegations.
Carpenter said the U.S. intelligence community’s track record on predicting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should give the public confidence in its current assessments. “Unfortunately, we have been more right than wrong in exposing what we believe may be coming next,” Carpenter said. He also noted that the Russian plan may not succeed.
Carpenter said it was also possible that Russia’s leaders would try to take over other parts of Ukraine, by imposing “puppets and proxies” in local governments and forcing out democratically elected officials. He said that this had appeared to be Moscow’s initial aim in Kyiv — a plan that included installing a new constitution in Ukraine — but that Russian forces had been forced to drop back to the country’s east and south after they were unable to take the capital.
Internet service disruption monitor NetBlocks said Russia has rerouted internet traffic in the Ukrainian region of Kherson, which it currently occupies, through Russia to tighten its grip on information and exert control.
On Saturday, the region of Kherson faced a nearly full internet blackout, NetBlocks said. When the internet was restored, traffic was rerouted through Russia, with NetBlocks noting on its website that the internet in Kherson was "hence likely now subject to Russian internet regulations, surveillance, and censorship."
Russian-appointed authorities in areas of Kherson said the region would adapt the Russian currency, the ruble, beginning May 1.
