According to US State Department spokeswoman Ned Price, the US remains worried that Russia may annex Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk areas and organize a bogus referendum there.

“It is a Russian playbook that we have, that we have seen turn to time and again, in Crimea, in eastern Ukraine. This is what Russian authorities and proto authorities have done in the past. They have sought to annex, they have sought to conduct sham elections to give their occupation this patina of legitimacy, and our concern remains that they will attempt to do so once again in the territory in eastern Ukraine,” he said at a State Department briefing.

Last week, the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe stated that the US has “highly credible” intelligence reports that Russia will attempt to annex the separatist-occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk “sometime in mid-May,” and that there are attempts to build a similarly titled “people’s republic” in Kherson to be annexed as well.

Price said Monday that “timeline-wise, nothing has changed.”

“We’re continuing to watch very closely,” he said, noting that the US made this information public so that “the world is keyed in” to what is happening.

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