Putin legalizes elections and deportations in Ukraine's temporarily occupied territories

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Ksenia Omelchenko

President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin signed amendments to the law "On martial law," which enable the facilitation of elections in temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and the deportation of people residing there.

The official portal of legal information of the Russian Federation reports this.

Now the possibility of "forced and controlled transfer of citizens from the territory where martial law has been imposed to territories where martial law has not been imposed" has been legalized.

It is also allowed to hold referendums and elections to the so-called "bodies of state power" and "bodies of local self-government" in the occupied territories if the Central Election Committee of the Russian Federation decides. This can be done both in the entire occupied territory and some part of it.

In April, Putin signed a decree that provided for the possibility of the "deportation" of Ukrainians from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine on other grounds.

According to that decree, Ukrainians who live in the occupied territories and have decided to retain Ukrainian citizenship have the right to stay there until July 1, 2024. After that, they can be deported.

The decree of the President of the Russian Federation on the introduction of martial law in the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions was signed on October 19 and entered into force at midnight on October 20.

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The Russian occupiers are actively relocating the civilian population of Ukraine's temporarily occupied regions to resettle them in economically depressed regions of their aggressor state.

Moreover, Russia is committing one more crime by abducting Ukrainian children. The deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia began before February 24, 2022. The occupation forces allegedly evacuated, as they called it, orphanages on the territory of the DNR and LNR before the start of the full-scale invasion. After the Russian army captured Ukrainian settlements in Chernihiv, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions, the mass deportation of children began. In April 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recognized the deportation of Ukrainian children by the Russians as genocide.

Read also – Ukraine launches investigation into Belarus' role in child deportations.