Over 96% said to favour joining Russia in first vote results from occupied Ukraine regions

First partial voting results from four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine showed majorities of more than 96 per cent in favour of becoming part of Russia after so-called referendums that Kyiv and the West have denounced as a sham.

Hastily arranged votes had taken place over five days in the four areas — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — that make up about 15 per cent of Ukrainian territory.

Russian-installed officials took ballot boxes from house to house in what Ukraine and the West said was an illegitimate, coercive exercise to create a legal pretext for Russia to annex the four regions.

President Vladimir Putin could then portray any Ukrainian attempt to recapture them as an attack on Russia itself. He said last week he was willing to use nuclear weapons to defend the “territorial integrity” of Russia.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the European Union to impose further economic sanctions on Russia to punish it for staging the votes, which he said would not change Ukraine’s actions on the battlefield.

Kyiv has repeatedly warned that Russian annexation of additional territories would destroy any chance of peace talks. It says Ukrainians who helped Russia organise the votes will face treason charges.

The state-owned Russian news agency RIA said the initial counts showed majorities ranging from 96.97 per cent in the Kherson region, based on 14 per cent of votes counted, to 98.19 per cent in Zaporizhzhia, based on 18 per cent of the count.

The majorities in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics were just under 98 per cent with 14 per cent and 13 per cent respectively of votes tallied.

Valentina Matviyenko, head of the upper house of the Russian parliament, said that if the vote results were favourable, it could consider the incorporation of the four regions on October 4, three days before Putin celebrates his 70th birthday.