The head of Russia's electoral commission said that the country's Defence Ministry and Federal Security Service (FSB) consider it possible to hold elections in September in the four Ukrainian regions that Russia claimes to have annexed, state news agency TASS reported on Thursday.
Russia does not fully control the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and fighting is ongoing in all four regions. The regions are scheduled to elect local governors in September.
Russia declared the regions part of its own territory after hastily conducting what it called referendums in occupied areas of Ukraine last September that Kyiv and the West denounced as illegal and coercive.