President Vladimir Putin will hold a signing ceremony in the Kremlin to add four territories of Ukraine into Russia, his spokesman says.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a signing ceremony would take place at 3pm Moscow time on Friday “on agreements on the accession of new territories into the Russian Federation.”
Agreements will be signed “with all four territories that held referendums and made corresponding requests to the Russian side,” Mr Peskov said on Thursday.
The votes were cast in the West as illegal and illegitimate.
Mr Putin’s decision to incorporate the regions into Russia means Moscow will annex vast areas across eastern and southern Ukraine, representing around 15 per cent of Ukraine’s total territory.
Russian-backed officials in four regions of Ukraine controlled by Russian forces said referendums showed overwhelming majorities of their populations had voted to join Russia in votes slammed by Ukraine and the West as “shams”.
Following the signing ceremonies in the Kremlin, Mr Putin will give a major speech and will meet with Moscow-appointed administrators of the Ukrainian regions, the Kremlin said.
On Moscow’s Red Square, a stage with giant video screens has been set up, with billboards proclaiming “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson – Russia!”
To annex the territories some sort of treaty will need to be struck and ratified by the Russian parliament, which is controlled by Putin allies. The areas will then be seen as part of Russia and its nuclear umbrella will extend to them.
Mr Putin has warned he would use nuclear weapons to protect Russian territory from attack.
Residents who escaped to Ukrainian-held areas in recent days have told of people being forced to mark ballots in the street by roving officials at gunpoint. Footage filmed during the exercise showed Russian-installed officials taking ballot boxes from house to house with armed men in tow.
“They can announce anything they want. Nobody voted in the referendum except a few people who switched sides. They went from house to house but nobody came out,” said Lyubomir Boyko, 43, from Golo Pristan, a village in Russian-occupied Kherson province.
Russia says voting was voluntary, in line with international law, and that turnout was high.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sought to rally international support against annexation in a series of calls with foreign leaders, including those of Britain, Canada, Germany and Turkey.
“Thank you all for your clear and unequivocal support. Thank you all for understanding our position,” Mr Zelensky said in a late-night video address.
Russia has announced it will mobilise some 300,000 reservists to bolster its forces in Ukraine. The conscription drive has sent thousands of Russian men fleeing to other countries.
Meanwhile Finland will close its border to Russian tourists from midnight local time, which is expected to lead to a significant drop in cross-border traffic, the government says.
The inflow of Russians is now seen as endangering Finland’s international relations, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told a news conference on Thursday.
Entry for family visits, as well as for work and studies, will still be permitted, he added.
The Finnish government, wary of being a transit nation into western Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone, on Friday said it planned to halt tourism from Russia and that a decision would be finalised in the days that followed.
