Ukrainians have told how people, including pensioners, were abducted at gunpoint from their homes, held in solitary confinement and tortured for refusing to vote in Russia’s “sham” referendums.

As President Vladimir Putin prepares to announce the annexation of four areas of southern and eastern Ukraine - a land grab which the West and Kyiv says it will refuse to recognise - terrified residents in the occupied areas of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, have told The Independent how separatist troops and local supporters tried to force people to vote.

They said volunteers carrying pro-referendum leaflets were physically dragging people to polling stations and spoke of large networks of “informers” who reported any citizen believed to be against annexation to the occupying forces.

Those fleeing also claimed many men were desperately heading to Ukrainian-held territories because of fears that conscription in occupied areas would start as early as next week once Moscow formalises annexation

Gunmen came to my house and arrested me and took me to a solitary confinement cell in a detention centre for three days,” says Olena, a 70-year-old woman from the occupied town of Melitopol, in the Zaporizhzhia region.