Volodymyr Zelenskyy has enacted an NSDC decision imposing sanctions on those behind illegal "elections" to Russia's State Duma in temporarily occupied Ukraine.

The website of the head of state reported this.

The package covers 44 individuals who act in Russia’s interests and facilitate the temporary occupation of parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, the Crimean peninsula and Sevastopol.

Some of them have already been “elected” as so-called deputies of illegally established local councils in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine.

The list also includes other criminals and accomplices of the aggressor state, among them the propagandist and collaborator Iryna Kuksenkova and former Ukrainian MP Yurii Onyshchuk, who began cooperating with the Russians after the occupation of Melitopol.

Ukraine stresses that these “elections” are illegitimate, and that the results of such a vote and all documents drawn up in the course of it have no legal basis whatsoever. They are a gross violation of the norms and principles of international law.

“The norms of international humanitarian law, in particular the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Convention, oblige an occupying power to respect the laws in force in the occupied territory. Occupation confers no sovereignty. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly affirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity — in 2014 with regard to Crimea, and in 2022, when 143 states condemned the attempted illegal annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions and declared it invalid. No ‘elections’, ‘referendums’ or ‘constituencies’ change that status,” said Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Adviser and Commissioner to the President on Sanctions Policy.

The “elections” were accompanied by mass falsification, coerced voting and turnout figures fabricated in advance. In this way Russia is attempting to legitimise its war crimes and to use the imitation of an electoral process as one of the instruments for consolidating control over the Ukrainian territories it has seized.

The relevant information will be passed to partners so that sanctions can be synchronised in their jurisdictions.

Ukraine and its partner countries have not recognised the “elections” in the temporarily occupied territories. Those that have condemned Russia’s actions include EU member states, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

“Our sanctions, and subsequently those of our partners, are the proper legal assessment of these ‘elections’ and of everyone who took part in them,” Vladyslav Vlasiuk stressed.