You can hold voting for a referendum? But no presidential election? Contradictory but whatever.
Furthermore Zelensky said that Russia should be invited to the next peace summit in November. No way he'll negotiate sensibly and it will still be for Ukraine's PR.
The majority of the world today says that Russia must be represented at the second summit, otherwise we will not achieve meaningful results,” he said, adding “since the whole world wants them to be at the table, we cannot be against it.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/601950-ukraine-russia-peace-talks-zelensky/
Clownsky's just adjusting his tone to retain the western audience imo.
I seriously doubt there will be any such referendum. I think this is just more cope, another desperate attempt to get some sort of "freeze" of the conflict now that Russia's advance is picking up pace. My gut feeling is they hope to pull off another Minsk-like ruse, but it's probably too little too late. Russia may go through the motions of pretending like this is a serious thing, but i don't see them accepting anything but a complete capitulation now that their war machine is starting to kick into high gear. Putin was not lying when he said iirc over a year ago "we haven't really started anything in earnest yet". Well now they have started and i don't think they'll stop anymore until all objectives are achieved.