The United States expects Moscow-appointed heads of administrations of the occupied Ukrainian regions to hold sham referendums to annex part of Ukraine. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made the announcement on Wednesday..

At the same time, he added that the United States will "

“Russian-appointed ‘leaders’ will hold bogus referendums to show that people in these regions want to join Russia. Then they use these fake votes to claim that the annexation of these regions is legal,” Blinken said at a press conference at the US State Department in Washington..

The first US diplomat stressed that the annexation of the territory of a sovereign and independent country is a gross violation of the UN Charter.

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“Members of the international community who have pledged to support the charter and international law have a responsibility and must condemn these plans of the Russian government and make it clear that they will never recognize such illegal actions,” he said..

According to him, if this is not done, in the future other countries may follow this shameful example..

Earlier, the official representative of the US National Security Council, John Kirby, announced Russia's preparation for the annexation of the occupied territories according to the 2014 scenario..

According to Bloomberg, the Russian Federation is in a hurry to hold pseudo-referendums in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine in order to give grounds to the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, to annex them to Russia in September.

Pseudo-referendums will allow Putin to demonstrate to the Russians at least some “successes”.

The Central Election Commission of Ukraine also declared the inadmissibility of holding so-called referendums in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions..