KYIV: The final day of voting was taking place in Russian-held regions of Ukraine on Tuesday in a referendum that is expected to serve as a pretext for their annexation by Moscow and rejected as a sham by Kyiv and its Western allies.

As the vote neared its end, a senior Kremlin official issued the bluntest warning yet that Russia was prepared to use nuclear weapons to halt a Ukrainian push to reclaim Moscow-occupied areas.

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