Russia’s Vladimir Putin will hold a signing ceremony on Friday formally annexing four more regions of Ukraine after self-styled referendums condemned by Ukraine and the West as a sham.
Russian-backed officials had earlier claimed the five-day exercise secured almost total popular support.
So-called votes were 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.
However, 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 US has 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.
Moscow-installed administrations in the four regions of southern and eastern Ukraine claimed Tuesday night that 93% of the ballots cast in the Zaporizhzhia region supported annexation, as did 87% in the Kherson region, 98% in the Luhansk region and 99% in Donetsk.
Ukraine too has dismissed the referendums as illegitimate, saying it has every right to retake the territories, a position that has won support from Washington.
The Kremlin has been unmoved by the criticism. After a counteroffensive by Ukraine this month dealt Moscow’s forces heavy battlefield setbacks, Russia said it would call up 300,000 reservists to join the fight. It also warned it could resort to nuclear weapons.
