Home › Security › What the 23 September 2022 referendums signalled
What the 23 September 2022 referendums signalled
Summary
A look back at the day voting began in occupied Ukrainian regions, amid mobilisation, border queues and a prisoner swap.
What did it mean when voting began in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine on 23 September 2022? Referendums opened that day in the occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts and in the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, on whether to join Russia. Ukraine and other countries considered them "sham" referendums.
A vote arriving on the heels of mobilisation
The timing mattered. On 21 September 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilisation in a major address to the nation, with students and conscripts exempted. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg responded the same day, calling the mobilisation dangerous and reckless and condemning Putin's use of nuclear rhetoric.
Neighbours reacted as well. Lithuania placed its rapid reaction force on high alert in response, according to Defence Minister Arvydas Anušauskas.
Pressure inside Russia
By 22 September 2022, large numbers of fighting-age men were leaving Russia. Long traffic jams built up at international border crossings, and the price of tickets for international flights rose sharply. The referendums therefore opened against a backdrop of visible unease at home as well as alarm abroad.
War and diplomacy continued
Fighting did not pause. On 22 September 2022, authorities of the Donetsk People's Republic accused Ukraine of shelling a market in Donetsk, saying six civilians were killed.
The same day brought a rare negotiated outcome. Ukraine and Russia released 55 Russian prisoners of war and 215 fighters from the Siege of Mariupol in an exchange mediated by Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Those freed included the pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, Azov Regiment commander Denys Prokopenko, British volunteers Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, and Moroccan volunteer Saadun Brahim.
Reading the day
Taken together, the events of 21–23 September 2022 show a conflict moving on several tracks at once: a mobilisation order and the reactions it provoked, continuing violence in Donetsk, a mediated exchange, and the start of voting in occupied territory. Russian-installed officials staged the votes on annexing occupied areas of Ukraine. Commentators and various countries denounced them, and later, only North Korea accepted the validity of the results.
