From Human Rights in Ukraine by Halya Coynash
While claiming near 100% support for ‘joining Russia’, the Russian occupiers are using weapons of coercion, including deprivation of medication, to force unwilling Ukrainians to take unwanted Russian passports
Russia and its ‘occupation regimes are openly threatening Ukrainians who have serious medical conditions with death if they refuse to take Russian passports. The situation is especially critical for those who need daily injections of insulin, which, in at least two occupied parts of Ukraine, are being denied local residents without proof of Russian citizenship.
Such appalling forms of coercion, and the evident lack of local demand for Russian passports, are worth stressing since Russia has already staged fake ‘referendums’ and claimed that almost 100% of the population in occupied parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts voted ‘to join Russia’. Moscow is near certain on 11 or 12 September to claim similarly improbable figures for the ‘turnout’ at its pseudo-elections on occupied Ukrainian territory and ‘overwhelming support’ for Russia’s ruling ‘United Russia’ party. It is quite clear that the reality is very different with Ukrainians facing threats of deportation, of having their children taken from there, or, literally, threats to their life if they do not take the citizenship they do not want.
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