East Ukraine’s self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic may consider joining Russia once Moscow controls all of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the separatist leader Denis Pushilin said on Tuesday.
Quoted by the Donetsk News Agency, Pushilin noted that the Russian-backed breakaway republic’s wishes and aspirations for joining the Russian Federation have been clearly traced since 2014, but the decision on that will be determined once the main task is completed to reach the constitutional borders of Russia.
Only two days before, Leonid Pasechnik, the leader of the other Russian-backed rebel region, Luhansk People’s Republic, announced the possibility of holding a referendum on joining the Russian Federation, a possibility that Kyiv refused claiming it has no legal basis and would trigger a stronger international response.
Pasechnik said that when the time comes, and that might be in near future, the people of Luhansk will exercise their ultimate constitutional right and express their opinion on joining the Russian Federation in a referendum.
Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s territory is the hardest part of Kyiv’s peace talks with Moscow and Ukraine, which says it is now fighting for its existence against the imperial-style land grab by Russia, has repeatedly said it will never agree to such a thing.
According to Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko, all fake referendums in the temporarily occupied territories in Donbas are null and void and will have no legal validity in Ukraine.
Nikolenko underscored that in such a case, Russia will further deepen its global isolation by being faced with an even stronger response from the international community.
Amid the claim they are puppets of Putin, both Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik were pushed again into the center of events by the Ukraine crisis and have seen their political profiles rocket, culminating in mid-February when they asked the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to recognize their republics.
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