Russia held elections on Saturday in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson regions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin claims to have annexed these parts of southern and eastern Ukraine last September. The West does not recognize Russia’s control of the occupied regions.
Yevheniia Hliebova, the head of the military administration in Novomykolaivka, a village in Kherson, told the Washington Post how the elections were going in these occupied regions. She said the process came across as an “election at gunpoint” because soldiers accompanied pollsters “carrying a weapon, so it was a threat, not verbal, but in fact it was a threat of violence.”
Other anonymous Ukrainians claimed that election officials appeared at their doors flanked by armed soldiers. Officials claimed the house call was due to the violence between Russia and Ukraine.
A boy looks from a voting booth as his
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