Ukraine round-up: Putin claims parts of Ukraine and horror as rocket strike kills dozens

OCT 1: In an angry speech in Moscow filled with accusations against the West, he claimed that people in Russian-held Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions had made their choice to join Russia.

But there was no independent monitoring of the hastily-organised votes and there were widespread accounts of people being intimidated into voting by armed soldiers.