DISINFO: International observer certifies that people are voting freely in the Ukraine referenda
SUMMARY
Participants in the Donbas referenda to join the Russian Federation are voting freely, Argentinian independent observer Lucas Adrián García said in Lugansk. “The role of an international referendum is to guarantee the process to be legitimate, and what we have seen those days is exactly that, totally different to what the media show. We could see people coming to vote freely, with a face of hope”, he stated to the Sputnik correspondent in the city.
RESPONSE
All the claims in this disinformation story are false, aiming to portray the illegal annexation of Ukrainian regions by the Russian Federation as the expression of the free will of the population. In fact, those referenda don’t meet any international standard to be considered legitimate. Multiple testimonies show that many voters were coerced to take part in the false consultation, and eyewitnesses and footage in places like Enerhodar and Kherson proved that officials escorted by soldiers went door to door picking up votes. Pictures published by international outlets and agencies show that Russian soldiers were present everywhere, so the allegation that “there were no soldiers around” is a blatant lie.
Not a single state in the world -including close allies of Russia such as Syria or Cuba, unlike in 2014 after Crimea’s illegal annexation- has stated its support or recognised the result of the referenda, despite Russia’s claims at the UN that the presence of over 100 observers from multiple countries recognised the outcomes as legitimate. Contrary to the claims in this disinformation story, these observers are not “independent” but sent by Moscow in a concerted effort to give cover to its pretensions of legitimacy.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives in our database, such as claims that “Referenda” in Eastern Ukraine are done with the same legal norms as in France, that Kherson residents want to join Russia in a referendum, that most people in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region identify as Russians or that the West is responsible for what happens after the Donbas referenda.