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The pro-Moscow leaders of Ukraine’s Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions called on President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to formally annex the territories into Russia, claiming residents had backed the move in a referendum.
The Kremlin-backed leader of the breakaway Lugansk region, Leonid Pasechnik, made the appeal to Putin claiming residents there had been under attack for eight years by Ukraine’s army.
Moscow-backed separatists have controlled large portions of Lugansk since 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.
“Taking into account the decision of the republic’s population at the referendum, I am asking you to consider making the Lugansk People’s Republic a subject of the Russian Federation,” Pasechnik said in a statement published by rebel officials.
His announcement was quickly followed by a similar appeal from Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-installed leader of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, which was captured by Russia after the start of Moscow’s military campaign on February 24.
“Our residents made a historic choice and decided to become part of the multinational population of the Russian Federation, in which all people are equal before each other and before the law,” Saldo said in a statement published on social media.
The Kremlin-installed leader of the partially occupied region of Zaporizhzhia, Vladimir Rogov, was the last of the three to appeal to Putin.
“We, the people of Zaporizhzhia, are inspired by the heroic acts of bravery of Russian soldiers,” he said in a statement.
“We wish to become one state with the Russian Federation!”