Five countries including the UK, Australia and Canada on Monday condemned Russia's "sham" parliamentary elections in swathes of occupied Ukraine, branding the move "part of a wider system of occupation".
"Holding Russia's State Duma elections in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine ... is a gross violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and independence, and the UN Charter," the countries, who also included New Zealand and Norway, said in a joint statement that cited votes held in occupied Crimea and Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.