Separatist leader asks to join Russia after claiming an overwhelming ‘yes’ to self-rule in unofficial referendum.

Ukraine’s most populous regions stood on the verge of joining Russia on Monday when the birth of a “People’s Republic” was simultaneously proclaimed in Donetsk and Luhansk.

Denis Pushilin, the self-styled “prime minister” of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, appeared outside the main government building, which was seized by his followers last month, and announced: “The People’s Republic is now sovereign!”

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As pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine prepared to hold a referendum on whether to declare their independence on Sunday, acting President Oleksander Turchinov warned that a “yes” vote could mean self-destruction.

The vote will be held in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where pro-Russian separatists have occupied government buildings in a number of towns, and have taken complete control of the city Slaviansk. The referendum has been dismissed by Ukraine’s government and other Western countries as illegitimate.

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Two Ukrainian helicopters were shot down Friday as Ukraine launched its first major offensive against the pro-Russia forces that have seized government buildings in the east. The Kremlin said Kiev’s move against the insurgents “destroyed” hopes for peace in the region.

Fighting broke out around dawn near Slovyansk, a city 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the Russian border that has become the focus of the armed insurgency against Ukraine’s interim government. Two helicopter crew were killed in the crashes, both sides said, and a pro-Russia militiaman was reported killed.

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Ukrainian forces killed up to five pro-Moscow rebels on Thursday as they closed in on the separatists’ military stronghold in the east and Russia launched army drills near the border in response, raising fears its troops would go in.

Under an international accord signed in Geneva last week, illegal armed groups in Ukraine, including the rebels occupying about a dozen public buildings in the largely Russian-speaking east, are supposed to disarm and go home.

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In what appears to be its first act after the restart of an anti-terror operation to purge Kremlin-backed separatists from eastern Ukraine, the country’s elite Interior Ministry forces “liberated” the resort town of Svyatohirsk in northern Donetsk Oblast “from unlawful armed groups,” the ministry reported on its website.

Prior to the operation, Ukrainian security officials had discovered the city’s monastery, the Svyatohirsk Assumption Lavra of the Moscow Patriarchate, served as a military base for the insurgents who have besieged the region.

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