The referendum in Zaporizhzhia will be much more scandalous and empty than the Crimean referendum of 2014: there will simply be no one to participate in it, political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin believes.

“For Putin, as a Chekist with legal education, it is very important to get a formal legal justification - here's a referendum for you. This referendum will be more scandalous and empty than the Crimean one,” Oreshkin said in the Air programme.

First of all, according to both Russian and Ukrainian laws, it is supposed to spend at least 2 months on the preparation of a referendum.

“If you seriously want to know the opinion of the people, you need to give these people time to get acquainted with the advantages or disadvantages of this or that system,” he said.

The biggest problem for the quasi-referendum will be the banal lack of people in the territories: hundreds of thousands of people left Ukraine or its separate regions occupied by Russia.

“It is ridiculous to hold a referendum in a territory where half of the population is missing, this population has fled either there or here, it is not there. And thirdly, who will count? Of course, this looks even worse than the Crimean referendum, in which the majority of the population, I’m sure of it, was not just for joining Russia, but rather for greater independence from Kyiv,” Oreshkin emphasized.

However, Dmitry Oreshkin has no doubts that the referendum will take place: “It will be a masquerade for an extremely undemanding taste, which, of course, will be held. Of course, several hundred and even thousands of people can gather for the picture, who will be in favor of joining, but not yet a referendum, which asks for the opinion of the whole people,” concluded the expert.