Donetsk asking to join Russia after poll ‘win’
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THE self-proclaimed head of the People’s Republic of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine yesterday declared the region a sovereign state and asked Russia to consider allowing it to accede.
“Proceeding from the expression of the will of the people of the Donetsk People’s Republic and in order to restore historical justice, we ask the Russian Federation to consider the issue of the Donetsk People’s Republic becoming part of the Russian Federation,” Denis Pushilin told reporters.
“We, the people of the Donetsk People’s Republic, based on the results of the referendum held on 11 May 2014 ... declare that the (republic) is henceforth a sovereign state,” Pushilin said.
Organizers said about 90 percent of those who cast ballots on Sunday in Donetsk and the neighboring Luhansk region backed sovereignty for the sprawling areas that lie along Russia’s border and form Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Donetsk has about 4.4 million people and Luhansk has 2.2 million.
Pro-Russians in the Luhansk region stopped short of mimicking the move made by their kin in Donetsk, but spokesman Vasily Nikitin said the Luhansk region will not vote in Ukraine’s May 25 presidential election.
Reacting to the referendums, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office said that “Moscow respects the expression of the people’s will.”
Putin called for the results to be “implemented in a civilized manner, without any repeat of violence, through dialogue between representatives of Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk.”
In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said “the Kiev authorities continue to display a criminal lack of readiness for dialogue with their own people” and urged the government to hold meetings with representatives of eastern and southern regions.
“The preliminary results of the ballot counts convincingly show a real desire on the part of citizens of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions for the right to independently make decisions about issues that are vitally important to them,” it said. “We believe that the results of the referendum should be brought to life within the framework of dialogue between Kiev, Donetsk and Luhansk.”
Ukraine’s central government and the West have completely rejected Sunday’s insurgent vote and accused Moscow of fomenting weeks of unrest in eastern Ukraine in a possible attempt to grab more land after annexing Crimea in March — accusations that Russia has denied.
“The farce, which terrorists call the referendum, will have no legal consequences except the criminal responsibility for its organizers,” Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said in a statement.
Ukraine’s crisis could grow even worse if regions start rejecting the presidential vote.
Putin’s office voiced hope that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe could help broker talks between the central government and the two regions.
Swiss President Didier Burkhalter, whose country currently chairs the OSCE, met with Putin last week to propose a road map for settling the Ukrainian crisis and outlined some of that plan yesterday in Brussels.
“We have seen in Moscow that there is openness for a dialogue,” Burkhalter said.
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