The official added that the US are not to accept any possible annexation, and that Moscow’s actions will be met with a strong response from the US government.
The high ranking official also told the media that Russia aims to manipulate the referenda’s to falsely claim that Ukrainians want to their territories to be annexed.
Meanwhile, the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank earlier reported that "the Kremlin’s changing plans suggest that occupying forces will likely move up the date of the annexation referenda in occupied Ukraine.”
An advisor to Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast Civil Military Administration, Serhiy Khlan, stated on Wednesday that “occupation forces have stopped discussing September 11 as a date for Russia’s sham referenda on the annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories,” the US experts said.
The ISW previously reported that “September 11, the date that polling will be held in local and regional elections across the Russian Federation,” was the most likely date “for annexation referenda to be held.”
According to Khlan, Russian occupation forces had referred to September 11 as the date of the pseudo-referenda, “but now the dates are again unclear,” as cited by the ISW.
The US experts warned that “the political, military, economic, and other consequences of a prolonged Russian military occupation of southern and eastern Ukraine would be devastating to the long-term viability of the Ukrainian state.”
(tf)
Source: IAR