Russian-controlled Donetsk votes in election
STORY: In December 2023, Russia's central election commission announced the presidential election on March 15-17 2024 will include voting in four regions of Ukraine that Russia claimed as its own territory last year.
Ukraine has said that any Russian vote in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions will be null and void, and that it will prosecute any observers sent to monitor voting.
Moscow's ability to hold the election in what it calls its "new territories" is politically important for the Kremlin.
But it raises logistical and security challenges because Russian troops only partly control the four regions.
The areas controlled by Moscow have been placed under martial law.
Russia's annexation claim in September 2022, seven months after its invasion of Ukraine, was rejected as illegal by Ukraine and most countries at the United Nations General Assembly.
