Voting was held in Luhansk and Donetsk in the east and in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south. The Russian president will make a major speech at the Kremlin.
A stage has already been set up in Moscow's Red Square, with billboards proclaiming the four regions as part of Russia. There were echoes of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, which also followed a discredited referendum and was heralded by a presidential victory speech from a stage.
The Western media says no independent monitoring of the
process took place and there were accounts of election officials going from
door to door escorted by armed soldiers.
The United States said it
will impose sanctions on Russia because of the referendums and EU member states
are considering an eighth round of measures.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday that people in occupied regions of Ukraine had been taken from their homes and workplaces by threat and sometimes at gunpoint. "This is the opposite of free and fair elections. And this is the opposite of peace, it is a dictated peace," she said.
The exercise began across 15% of Ukraine last Friday with only a few days' notice. Russian state media argued that the use of armed guards was for security purposes but it was clear that it had the added effect of intimidating residents.
"You have to answer verbally and the soldier marks the answer on the sheet and keeps it," one woman in Enerhodar told the BBC.
Russia
does not fully control any of the four regions it has decided to annex.
Although most of Luhansk remains in Russian hands, Moscow only controls 60% of
Donetsk.
Seven months after Russian
forces invaded Ukraine from the north, east and south, war is still raging on
the front lines in all four areas. The capital of the southern region of
Zaporizhzhia is firmly under the control of Ukraine's government, and a
counter-offensive is underway in Kherson.
