For months we have read of Vladimir Putin's plans to hold "sham" referendums in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. And for two days now, he has been carrying out those plans in the provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, though not all are fully occupied.
In describing the illegal referendums, the word "sham" has a certain unambiguous ring to it, denoting a "trick," a "hoax," a "cheap falseness." Here, the word cheap itself is true in its first meaning; NPR reports that "Russian news outlets confirmed that door-to-door voting is how most of the referendums would be held." Putin has spared himself even the minor expense of an electoral infrastructure — such as, voting booths.
As have other news outlets, NPR also reports that the voting "is largely seen as a sham." Yet Timothy Snyder, professor of modern European history at Yale and noted scholar of authoritarianism, contrarily — and with respect to terminology, correctly — offers this observation:
"There is not only no legal basis for speaking of a 'referendum,' but not even much factual basis for speaking of a “sham referendum.” A sham is shambolic but it does actually exist. What Russia is undertaking is nothing more than a media exercise designed to shape how people think about Russian-occupied Ukraine."
A sham represents something nonetheless real, while a distinct media event — such as a Putin referendum or a Donald Trump speech — does not. Writes Snyder: "There will be no more reason to report [the results] in a sentence with the word 'referendum' or 'vote' in it than there would be to report my claim, made here, that 97% of the inhabitants of Brooklyn wish to join Mississippi."
Still, Prof. Snyder neglects that there is indeed something very real in Putin's bottomless unrealness. Holding media events of imaginary referendums, in Ukraine in which imaginary pro-Russian Ukrainians express their electoral will at their front doors with actual rifle barrels in their faces, is only the first measure of Putin's intent.
For with those phantom results in hand, he'll declare Russia's annexation of the occupied Ukrainian territories. Then, quite realistically, he'll announce that those "re-acquired" provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are as much a part of Russia as is the province of Moscow — which, under sovereign Russian law, they are.
From there, the four additional Russian provinces will rest under President Putin's nuclear protection. An attack on Kherson will be no different from an attack on Moscow, Putin will further announce, adding, again, "This is not a bluff." Whereupon Western leaders will become paralytic with fear and anxiety, questioning the destinations of their weapons supplies to Ukraine.
If there can be a lighter side to Putin's clinically corrupt judgment, it lies in his "partial mobilization" at home. Let's just say his recruitment trucks have hit some bumpy roads. The NY Times reports that "thousands have been arrested for protesting the call-ups in Russia in the face of harsh laws against dissent." And Reuters relates that "the burden of the mobilisation - and the war itself - is falling on poor, ethnic minority regions to avoid triggering popular anger in the capital Moscow."
In Ukraine, however, Putin is decidedly impartial. There he is drafting every last Ukrainian man under Russian occupation, ages 18 to 35. The pounding depletion of his own forces — 80,000 dead or wounded — has impelled him to forcibly enlist Ukrainians to kill other Ukrainians. Or so he thinks.
Western military analysts have reported that Putin's unconsenting Ukrainian conscripts from the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces were part of Russia's spectacularly ineffective defenses in northeastern Ukraine — the Kharkiv region — which, along many front-line points, permitted President Zelensky's forces to kick Putin's forces back to their border.
And in the south — the Kherson region — Ukrainian intelligence reported last week that Putin's unwilling Ukrainian conscripts have "refused to take part in combat missions." Supported by reliable sources, the intel agency said Russian commanders have had to resort to bullying the Ukrainians, threatening to send them "to the front line without weapons if they refuse to follow orders."
Although the Russian tyrant's "electoral" scheme in Ukraine is merely a meretricious phantasm — a farce more ghostly than any sham — his war in Ukraine is as realistically ghastly as Stalin's Holomodor, possibly soon to get ghastlier. We shall see what Putin does with his annexation-nuclear ultimatum, but at least his forcible conscription of Ukrainian men appears to be doing only injury to his offensive gambits.