The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry strongly condemned on Saturday the Russian Federation’s plans to hold presidential elections on occupied Ukrainian territory early next year, following the decision taken by Russian lawmakers on Friday.

Russian authorities, in addition to setting a date for the presidential election, also announced that they plan to arrange voting in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. These are territories Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine last year, eight months into the ongoing war between the sovereign countries.

The current war between Russia and Ukraine is an escalation of the conflict that started in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. In the years that followed, several naval incidents and cyberattacks were launched between the parties, and heightened political tensions ultimately culminated in a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

Ukraine has resolutely condemned Russian plans to hold elections in occupied territories, arguing that such actions undermine efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. “Holding Russian elections on Ukrainian territories grossly violates the Constitution and legislation of Ukraine, the norms and principles of international law, in particular the UN Charter,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry remarked in their statement. “Such an electoral process, like other similar propaganda activities in the past, will be null and void.”

“Similar propaganda activities,” likely refers to the local elections for Russian-installed legislatures in the occupied Ukrainian territories this past September, the votes from which were denounced by Kyiv and the West.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also called on the international community to publicly condemn the Russian election in the occupied territories, and asked them to impose sanctions on those individuals found to be involved in their “organization and conduct”.

“Any election in Russia has nothing to do with democracy,” the Ukrainian statement read. “They serve only as a tool to keep the Russian regime in power.”

Incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced his intentions to run for re-election, seeking to extend his presidency with a fifth term. Boris Nadezhdin, a former member of the State Duma, also announced his candidacy in November. He will be running on an anti-war platform.

The election is set to take place on the 15-17th of March 2024. The winner will later be inaugurated on the 7th of May.