3 Roubles THE ACCESSION TO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Issued to mark the formal annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson — following referendums in September 2022 that were widely condemned as illegitimate by the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community. Russia began minting commemorative series for the territories almost immediately after the annexation decrees were signed by Putin, well before Russian forces had established full military control over any of the four regions.