Pro-Russia rebels to hold east Ukraine referendum despite Putin plea

Pro-Russian insurgents in eastern Ukraine said Thursday that they intend to go ahead with a planned referendum on greater autonomy Sunday, despite a call from Russian President Vladimir Putin to delay it.

"The referendum will happen May 11," the leader of the rebels' self-styled Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, told reporters.

The organizers say the referendum would decide whether to give the eastern regions of the country more autonomy within Ukraine, but they have left open the possibility of using it to seek independence or annexation by Russia.

The decision to hold the vote as planned was unanimous, said Pushilin. The suggestion to postpone the referendum "came from a person who indeed cares for the people of the southeast" of Ukraine, Pushilin said. "But we are the bullhorn of the people."

A spokeswoman for pro-Russian activists in the town of Slovyansk confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the vote would happen Sunday, while a group of pro-Russian rebels in the city of Luhansk said they, too, were pushing ahead with a referendum on Sunday.

On the ground in Ukraine, many have feared that the referendum could be a flashpoint for further violence between Ukrainian troops and the pro-Russian militants who have seized government buildings in about a dozen cities in the east.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed by phone on Thursday joint efforts to defuse the crisis, which also involve the EU and OSCE European security organisation, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said.

While Putin's call on Wednesday to postpone the vote was seen as part of an effort to step back from confrontation with the West, on Thursday Russia conducted military exercises that Russian news agencies said simulated a massive retaliatory nuclear strike in response to a hypothetical enemy attack.

The Russian president said the exercise involving Russia's nuclear forces had been planned in November, but it came as relations between Russia and the West have plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War.

Putin on Wednesday also declared that Russia has pulled its troops away from the Ukrainian border, although NATO and Washington said they saw no signs of this.

Putin spoke more positively about the Ukrainian interim government's plan to hold a presidential election on May 25, calling it a "step in the right direction," but reiterated Russia's long-standing contention that it should be preceded by constitutional reforms.

His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, added on Thursday that the election could be considered legitimate only if Ukraine stops its "punitive operations" in the east to clear out militia groups who are occupying government buildings and begins a national dialogue on resolving the crisis, the Interfax news agency reported.

The developments from pro-Russian groups and Putin's announcements about Ukraine came as a poll released on Thursday showed that a strong majority of Ukrainians want their country to remain a single, unified state.

This was true even in the largely Russian-speaking east where the pro-Russian insurgency has been fighting for autonomy.

The poll, conducted last month by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, found that 77 percent of people nationwide want Ukraine to keep its current borders, and that nearly as many, 70 percent, in the east feel the same. Only among Russian speakers does the percentage drop significantly, but it is still over half, at 58 percent.

The central government in Kyiv has the confidence of only about 41 percent of Ukrainians, with a sharp divide between the west of the country, where support is 60 percent, and the east, where it is a low 24 percent, according to the poll.

Russia, however, is viewed with great suspicion, with three times as many Ukrainians surveyed saying Russia is having a bad influence on their country as saying its impact is positive.

However, in Crimea, which Russia annexed in March following a referendum, 93 percent of people surveyed expressed confidence in Putin and said Russia was playing a positive role on the peninsula. Their confidence in U.S. President Barack Obama, on the other hand, was recorded at a dismal 4 percent.

In a parallel survey Pew conducted in Russia last month, 61 percent agreed that there are parts of neighboring countries that belong to Russia. The 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union left many ethnic Russians in other countries, including a swath of eastern and southern Ukraine that Putin had described as historically Russian territory.

Al Jazeera and wire services