The pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine decided today to go ahead with Sunday's referendum on autonomy despite a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin to delay it.
While Putin's call yesterday to postpone the vote was seen as part of an effort to step back from confrontation and negotiate a deal with the West, he fueled tensions again today by overseeing military exercises that Russian news agencies said simulated a massive retaliatory nuclear strike in response to an enemy attack.
Putin said the exercise involving Russia's nuclear forces had been planned back in November, but it came as relations between Russia and the West have plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War.
On the ground in Ukraine, many have feared that the referendum could be a flashpoint for further violence between Ukrainian troops and the pro-Russia militants who have seized government buildings in about a dozen cities in the east.
The decision to hold the vote as planned was unanimous, said Denis Pushilin, co-chairman of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic.
He said the suggestion to postpone the referendum "came from a person who indubitably cares for the population of the southeast" of Ukraine and thanked Putin for his efforts to find a way out of the situation. "But we are just a bullhorn for the people," Pushilin said. "We just voice what the people want and demonstrate through their actions."
The question on the ballot is: "Do you support the act of proclamation of independent sovereignty for the Donetsk People's Republic?"
Despite the phrasing, the organisers have said that only after the vote will they decide whether they want actual independence, greater autonomy within Ukraine or annexation by Russia.
Putin yesterday also declared that Russia has pulled its troops away from the Ukrainian border, although NATO and Washington said they have seen no signs of this.
"I have very good vision but while we've noted Russia's statement so far we haven't seen any - any - indication of troops pulling back," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a post on Twitter.
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov accused NATO and the Pentagon of deliberately misrepresenting the situation on the border and urged them "to stop cynically misleading the international community," the Interfax news agency reported.
