Russia proxies in Ukraine hold breakaway polls

Voting on whether Russia should annex Kremlin-controlled regions of Ukraine opened yesterday as the West denounced the referendum that has dramatically raised the stakes of Moscow's seven-month invasion.

The voting began as UN investigators accused Russia of committing war crimes on a "massive scale" in Ukraine, listing bombings, executions, torture and sexual violence, but said it was too soon to prove crimes against humanity.

As polling got underway, Ukrainian forces said they were clawing back territory from the Moscow-backed separatists, contesting territory the Kremlin seeks to control.

The votes in four regions are the latest shock development in a ferocious war that UN investigators said had seen violence -- like executions and torture -- that amounted to war crimes.

The referendums in the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as in the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions have been dismissed as a "sham" by Kyiv's Western allies.

And even diplomats from Russia's closest ally since the war began, Beijing, told Ukraine that the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries must be respected".

Earlier this month, Ukrainian forces seized back most of the north-eastern Kharkiv region in a huge counter-offensive that has seen Kyiv retake hundreds of settlements that had been under Russian control for months.

On Friday, Russian news agency TASS showed officials in Donetsk alerting residents to the polls by loudspeaker, surrounding one local as he voted.

Denis Pushilin, a pro-Russian separatist leader in the Donetsk region -- part of the industrial Donbas region -- said on Telegram that "Donbas is Russia".

Kyiv yesterday said its forces had recaptured a village in the Donetsk region and taken back positions south of the war-scarred town of Bakhmut.

The four regions' integration into Russia -- which for most observers is a foregone conclusion -- would represent a major escalation of the conflict.

"We cannot -- we will not -- allow (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to get away with it," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the UN Security Council on Thursday, condemning the referendums as a "sham".

The referendums are reminiscent of Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014. Western capitals maintain that a similar vote then was fraudulent and hit Moscow with sanctions.

In Donetsk and Lugansk -- which Putin already recognised as independent before invading Ukraine in February -- residents are answering if they support their "republic's entry into Russia", TASS reported.

Ballots in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia ask the question: "Are you in favour of secession from Ukraine, formation of an independent state by the region and its joining the Russian Federation as a subject of the Russian Federation?"

Russian news agencies reported voting began on Friday at 0500 GMT while TASS reported paper ballots would be used to save time.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the referendums as a "farce".

In another development, UN investigators yesterday accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine.

Speaking before the United Nations Human Rights Council, the head of a high-level investigative team listed numerous serious violations committed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine seven months ago.

Erik Mose, chairman of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) set up by the council in March, said the team had seen evidence of numerous executions and the rape and torture of children.

"Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine," he said.

The categorical nature of that statement was unusual for UN investigators, but the team of three independent experts said the evidence they had found was clear.

In the few months they have been on the job, they said they had initially concentrated on crimes committed in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions in late February and March.

They had visited 27 towns, interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses, and had "inspected sites of destruction, graves, places of detention and torture, as well as weapon remnants".

"We have been on the ground... and concluded that what we saw amounted to, according to our evidence, war crimes," Mose told journalists.