KYIV, Ukraine - Pro-Russian officials in the two self-declared separatist "republics" in eastern Ukraine pleaded Monday for urgent votes calling on Moscow to immediately annex the territories, a sign of apparent panic that the Kremlin's war in Ukraine is failing.
The appeals from authorities in the Luhansk and Donetsk people's republics came as Ukrainian forces continued to extend their gains of recent days, having already pushed Russian troops out of most of the northeast Kharkiv region.
