The referendum was held in four regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson – which make up about 15 percent of the Ukrainian territory.

Pro-Russian authorities in Luhansk announced that 98.5 percent of people voted to join Russia, based on 69 percent of ballots counted. In Zaporozhye, 92.9 percent of them voted “yes” based on more than 70 percent of the votes counted, while in Kherson over 87 percent voted “yes,” the head of the election commission said. Figures from Donetsk were not immediately available.

 Ukraine and the West denounced it as illegitimate, a coercive exercise to create a legal pretext for Russia to annex those regions.