The Kremlin would decide to indefinitely postpone the organization of referendums on the annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories due to the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv, Meduza reports citing two sources close to the Presidential Administration in Moscow.

Journalists from this independent investigative site operating outside of Russia have reported for the first time, also citing sources inside the Kremlin, that President Vladimir Putin’s administration wants to annex all the conquered Ukrainian territories, not just the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic. and Donetsk as a pretext for invading Ukraine.

Information obtained by Russian investigative journalists since early June indicates that Moscow has even begun recruiting “instructors” and political “officers” to prepare the population of Ukrainian territories to join Russia, and that some of them have already been sent to the territory.

On August 9, the occupying authorities of the Zaporizhia region in the southeast of Ukraine were the first to officially announce the holding of such a referendum, although all Russian leaders in the occupied territories had previously expressed similar intentions.

Last Monday, one of the officials of the Russian occupation forces in Kherson announced the “suspension” of plans to organize a referendum on joining Russia. This became known exactly one week after the beginning of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south of the country.

A rift between the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin’s party?

Currently, Meduza sources report that the Kremlin has decided to postpone indefinitely the referendums on the “accession” of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, as well as the occupied territories of Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where the Russians established the so-called “military-civilian administrations”.

Interlocutors of “Meduza” say that such a decision was made due to a lightning counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, which completely caught the military command in Moscow by surprise, and the “politics” sent to Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia have already been recalled. Russia.

“Everyone hastily left. He was ordered to return home,” claims one of Meduza’s sources, but points out that Kherson “political scientists” sent to prepare for the referendum still remain in the region.

Interestingly, news of the Kremlin’s intentions came just days after President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party formally proposed a referendum on annexation on November 4, when Russia celebrates “National Unity Day.”

“Donetsk, Luhansk and many other Russian cities will finally return to their native territories. And the Russian world, today divided by formal borders, will restore its integrity,” Andriy Turchak, secretary of the United Russia General Council, said last Wednesday.

Russia has repeatedly postponed holding referendums on annexation

It is not clear whether the United Russia party is being kept abreast of decisions made in the Kremlin or whether President Vladimir Putin’s administration decided to postpone the referendums until late last week after the scale of the disaster in Kharkiv became apparent.

Initially, the Kremlin planned to annex the territories it wanted from Ukraine back in April, anticipating a quick occupation of the country. The plans were then postponed until September, when it was hoped that referendums could be held simultaneously with regional elections in Russia.

Those elections were held last weekend, but no referendums were held, and the Kremlin was weighing whether or not to hold them until the occupation of the entire Donetsk region, which is now under threat from the north after Ukrainian forces advanced on Kharkiv.

In early September, several Kremlin sources told RBC, Russia’s largest financial television channel, that President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin advisers had finally decided to hold those referendums by the end of the fall, probably in November at the latest.

It turns out that now the plans have been postponed again, and a later date will be determined depending on the results of the Ukrainian offensive.

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