Last week, Russia held sham referendums in four provinces of Ukraine, which supposedly showed the residents overwhelmingly supported the regions being annexed by Russia. Yesterday the lower house of the Russian Duma unanimously ratified the annexation. The upper house is expected to approve it today, which would make it official, at least under Russian law.
But because Russian forces don't actually all of the territory it supposedly annexed and those areas of Russian control are shrinking by the day, it's no longer clear what the new Russian borders are:
The Kremlin reflected the disarray of its forces on the ground, where territory was rapidly changing hands, acknowledging that it did not yet know what new borders Russia would claim in southern Ukraine. “In terms of the borders, we’re going to continue to consult with the population of these regions,” Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters on Monday.
But if they don't know what the new borders are, how did they decide who got to vote last week?
