Steps to reproduce:

1. Write something (with citations) in your draftspace.
2. Save the page.
3. Copy the contents.
4. Open VisualEditor for a different page.
5. Paste what you want.
6. Save and fix all the ref formatting in the wikitext source editor.

Desired steps:

1. Write something (with citations) in your draftspace.
2. Save the page.
3. Copy the contents.
4. Open VisualEditor for a different page.
5. Paste what you want.
6. It just works.