DONETSK, Ukraine – Eastern Ukraine’s unrecognized Kremlin-backed separatist republics say they will stage a vote to elect their leaders and legislatures on Nov. 2 in a move that has been condemned by Ukraine and the international community as illegitimate.
Tomorrow’s playact, observers note,
invokes recent memories of the sham referendum in Crimea that Russia forcibly held
under the barrels of guns and tanks in March that was supposed to legitimize
the peninsula’s annexation in contravention of international law and the 1994
Budapest Memorandum.
Critics have described the preposterous
attempt at holding anything remotely resembling a popular vote in the
self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic
(LPR) as a farce.
While pro-Ukrainian forces could not
run in the election due to an atmosphere of fear, all major pro-Russian competitors of the republics’ incumbent
leaders were not allowed to take part on technical grounds – a practice that
separatists likely borrowed from the Kremlin. Most of those given permission to
run by an illegitimate body that refers to itself as an election commission are
virtual unknowns who are not expected to pose any threat to the separatist
leadership.
Donetsk city-native Roman Lyagin, the
self-declared regional election commissioner in the region, disagreed. He
told the Kyiv Post that the commission’s refusal to register many
political forces, including those linked to separatist leaders, showed its
“impartiality.” “If we had allowed them to participate (in the elections) we
would have violated the law,” he said. “We couldn’t do that.”
The LPR’s government was not available
for comment either by phone or e-mail.
The elections have also been compared
to the March 16 referendum on Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the May
11 independence referendums in the DPR and LPR, which were unsanctioned and held
with numerous violations. Observers have lambasted the referendums for
vote rigging, absence of media freedom before the vote, a lack of independent
observers and a non-transparent ballot counting process and predicted the same
for the Nov. 2 elections.
Lyagin said over 50 foreign observers
had already registered for the elections. Apart from Russia and Georgia’s
breakaway republic of Abkhazia, there will also be observers from France,
Belgium, Germany, Israel, Bulgaria and the U.S., he added.
Ukrainian authorities, the West and
the United Nations have described the election as illegitimate. Kyiv has urged
separatists to hold local elections on Dec. 7 under a Ukrainian law
granting insurgent-held areas special status. However, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Oct. 28 that Moscow would nevertheless recognize
the elections’ results.
Volodymyr Kipen, head of the Donetsk
Social Research and Political Analysis Institute, said by phone that the
elections were being orchestrated by Russia.
“This is another attempt to legitimize
these pseudo-states,” he said. “This attempt was approved by the puppet masters
of the separatists, namely Russian authorities. Their aim is to keep holding
Ukraine by the throat and make sure there is constant pressure on Ukraine.”
The Moscow-led Donetsk breakaway region
On Oct. 12, the body that is posing as
the election commission for the Donetsk insurgents, which include among them
Russian intelligence officers, regular military, and proxies, refused to
register Pavel Gubarev’s Novorossiya party because it had not been notified of
the conference at which the party had been founded. On the next day, Gubarev
survived a murder attempt that some observers linked to his election campaign.
Gubarev, a former member of Russia’s
RNE Neo-Nazi group, was chosen as the “people’s governor” of Donetsk by
pro-Russian protesters in March but has since been sidelined by other
separatist leaders. He has recently become a critic of the Sept. 5 ceasefire
deal that was brokered between Ukrainian officials led by ex-President Leonid
Kuchma, the Russian ambassador to Ukraine and the Kremlin proxy rebels.
Nor did the commission register United
Russia, a namesake of Russia’s ruling party, and Oplot, a pro-Russian group
that loathes the post-EuroMaidan government, due to purported errors in their
documents.
Oplot was founded in Kharkiv in 2010 by
a group of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s supporters and earned
notoriety for attacking EuroMaidan activists. The self-proclaimed commission’s
decision not to register Oplot surprised many observers since DPR Prime
Minister Alexander Zakharchenko heads the group’s military arm.
The Communist Party was not registered
either, with the so-called central election commission arguing that it did not
notify it of the plenum that nominated its candidates and did not submit the
required information. The move contrasts with the strongly pro-Russian
Communist Party’s participation in the Oct. 26 Ukrainian parliamentary
election.
“Roman Lyagin, head of the DPR’s
Central Elections Commission, established a strict filter,” Yuly Fyodorovsky, a
Luhansk-based political analyst, said by phone. He said the commission’s
purpose was to ensure Zakharchenko’s re-election.
On Oct. 28, Ukraine’s
Security Service released a recording of telephone conversations purportedly between
Boris Litvinov, speaker of the DPR’s legislature and leader of its Communist Party,
Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Borodai and First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei
Purgin.
In the recording, Litvinov told
Borodai that the authorities’ decision not to register the Communist Party and
other groups could lead to a riot and said he was unhappy with an election
campaign tightly controlled by Zakharchenko’s people. Borodai replied that
Litvinov should not make statements without the DPR leadership’s approval and
made references to taking orders from the “Center,” apparently implying Moscow.
“References to the people’s wishes do
not have any meaning whatsoever,” Borodai added about the election, according
to the recording.
Only two organizations made it to the
final list: the Donetsk Republic, whose list is headed by Zakharchenko and
Purgin, and Free Donbas.
The Donetsk Republic, founded by Purgin
in 2005, had sought secession from Donbas, encompassing Luhansk and Donetsk
oblasts, long before the Donetsk People’s Republic was proclaimed by
separatists in April.
Free Donbas is a lesser known group.
Fyodorovsky said that it was a front for representatives of some parties that
were not allowed to participate, including Novorossiya. Gubarev’s wife
Yekaterina said in October that Novorossiya would field its candidates as part
of the Free Donbas list.
For the election of the DPR’s head,
the election body registered Zakharchenko and two low-profile figures,
Alexander Kofman and Yury Sivokonenko. Kofman is first deputy speaker of the
DPR’s legislature, while Sivokonenko is a retired riot police officer and a
martial arts trainer.
According to a poll conducted by the
Donetsk State University and published on Oct. 24, 48 percent of the population
are expected to vote for the Donetsk Republic, while 11 percent will vote for
Free Donbas, according to the DPR government’s site. In the election of the
republic’s head, Zakharchenkoo, Sivokonenko and Kofman are expected to get 52
percent, 7 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
The remaining residents of Donetsk who
haven’t fled the regional capital had different attitudes toward the election
on the eve of the vote on Nov. 1.
“I don’t believe the Kyiv junta, I
want life to be better here,” said Fedor Chekh, an 85-year old pensioner,
explaining why he will vote in the election.
Chekh added he didn’t feel himself at
home in Ukraine and expected the DPR to join Russia in the future. “My
motherland is the Soviet Union,” he said.
Aleksandr, a 34-year-old businessman
who was playing with his two children in a park to the distant sound of
shelling, said he wasn’t planning to vote in the elections on Nov. 2.
He said he didn’t believe the Donetsk
People’s Republic could exist as a separate state. “How is it possible for one
oblast to become a country?” he said. Aleksandr added that he believed the
war could come to an end soon, but after months of hostilities he no longer
felt himself to be part of Ukraine.
“If the newly elected authorities of
DPR announce mobilization, I will go to fight (on the DPR’s side),” he said.
The Kremlin-backed Luhansk breakaway region
Similarly to the DPR, the Luhansk
People’s Republic also refused to register many parties on technical grounds.
One of them is the Liberation Front,
which is headed by Alexander Bednov, commander of the Batman military unit and
a vehement critic of LPR President Igor Plotnitsky and the Sept. 5 Minsk ceasefire deal
with Ukraine. In October Bednov clashed with representatives of the Central
Elections Commission over its refusal to register his party, and three people
were injured.
Bednov also sought to run as a
candidate in the election of the LPR’s head but was not registered either.
Another organization that didn’t make
it to the final list is the Luhansk district of the Almighty Don Host, a local
Cossack group. The commission also refused to register the Communists of
the Luhansk Oblast and several little-known groups.
Fyodorovsky said that the Central
Elections Commission had removed Plotnitsky’s strongest
competitors at the initial stage.
“This is the work of Moscow-based
political consultants,” he said. “They are carrying out the task of re-electing
the current leaders.”
The commission registered only three
parties – Plotnitsky’s Peace for Luhanshchina, the Luhansk Economic Union, a
group of entrepreneurs, and the People’s Union, a little-known organization.
In the election of the LPR’s head, the
most prominent registered candidates are Plotnitsky and Oleg Akimov, head of
the Federation of Labor Unions and a former Party of Regions functionary who
was nominated by the Luhansk Economic Union.
Two other registered candidates are
Larisa Airapetyan, the LPR’s healthcare minister, and businessman Viktor
Penner. “These are unknown figures used just for decorum,” Fyodorovsky said.
According to recent opinion polls,
Plotnitsky’s Peace for Luhanshchina and Akimov’s Luhansk Economic Union are
expected to get about 40 percent and 20 percent, respectively, while Plotnitsky
and Akimov are expected to get approximately the same percentages as their
organizations, he said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]. A Kyiv Post staff writer contributed to this article.
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support fromwww.mymedia.org.ua, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action, as well as Ukraine Media Project, managed by Internews and funded by the United States Agency for International Development.
