The United States Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, on Tuesday, remarked that the western countries will not be recognizing the pro-Russia referendum votes that might lead to Russia’s annexation of a certain part of Ukraine’s territory. He referred to the votes as a “diabolical scheme” by Moscow. 

anews reported that Blinken said to the media, “We and many other countries have already been crystal clear. We will not — indeed, we will never — recognize the annexation of Ukrainian territory by Russia”.

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This statement comes at a time when partial results have been declared of the votes in Russia regarding the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, namely, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. These four regions constitute 15% of Ukraine’s territory.

In his press meet, the 60-year-old Blinken reiterated Joe Biden’s statement that the United States “will impose additional swift and severe costs on Russia” if the Vladimir Putin-led country decides to annex Ukrainian territories.

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Blinken further said, “It’s important to remember what’s going on here. Russia invaded Ukraine, seized territory and is engaged in a diabolical scheme on some of the territory it seized where it has moved the local populace out”.

He also claimed that a number of people who were originally living in these areas have been deported elsewhere or “simply disappear(ed)”. Blinken went on to claim, “Then they bus Russians in, they install puppet governments and they engage in the referendum and manipulate, in any event, the outcome to then claim that the territory belongs to Russia”.

Regarding the votes, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said, “The legal situation will radically change from the point of view of international law and that will also have consequences for security in these territories”.

He also stated that Putin has spoken to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regarding his willingness to negotiate with Ukraine. Peskov also did not rule out the possibility of the Nord Stream leak being a sabotage.