You're reading: Russian-backed interference poses biggest challenge to presidential election

The snap presidential elections scheduled for May 25 will be the hardest to conduct in Ukraine’s modern history. They follow the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s annexation of Crimea that left five percent of the nation living in occupied territory, and will be held amid Russian military aggression in Ukraine’s eastern regions.

Yanukovych, whom Russia is harboring from criminal prosecution in Kyiv, has already denounced the upcoming election as “illegitimate.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has also warned that he won’t recognize the outcome, and pro-Russian separatists operating in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts have pledged to disrupt it.

But Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) says nothing will stop it from being held.

“The election process is ongoing and there are no laws to stop it,” says Andriy Mahera, deputy head of the CEC. “If the process of voting doesn’t happen in some constituencies it will not affect the validity of election, and can’t prevent the Central Election Commission from counting the results and the newly elected president from taking an oath.”

Oleksandr Chernenko, the head of election watchdog Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU), says that the only thing that can prevent the election from happening is if the government declares a state of war. But various government officials have said that won’t happen.

The presidential election will also coincide with some 270 snap local elections as well as a by-election of lawmakers in Ivano-Frankivsk city, the CEC said.

Experts say that odds of holding a referendum on raising the status of the Russian language or amending Ukraine’s constitution on the same day are low due to the shortage of time for preparation and absence of laws that would regulate some procedures.

“Of course in Crimea they managed to prepare a referendum in just 10 days, but do we need a show like this in the whole of Ukraine?” Chernenko said.

Many hurdles still remain for the vote to go off. At the moment, over 1.5 million Ukrainian voters live on the Crimean peninsula, which is occupied by Russia. They have no chance to vote at home.

If they want to vote, they will have to travel to mainland Ukraine and register at any polling station there. The problem is that the procedure has to be completed five days before the election, or on May 19. At the moment, Crimean voters can check in with regional administration departments that keep voter registers. After May 6, when the polling stations are set up, voters can register at any of those.

This means that Crimean Ukrainians will have to travel from the peninsula twice, perhaps taking time off work to vote. Several Crimean residents informally polled by the Kyiv Post say they will hardly use the procedure to exercise their right. The Crimean Tatar Mejlis, its governing body, is yet to make a decision on whether to recommend the Crimean Tatar community to travel to Kherson city to vote. “Unfortunately we have no other mechanisms to organize this,” Mahera said.

Chernenko of CVU says there are proposals to make the voting procedure easier for Crimean residents, but it’s not yet clear if parliament is prepared to back them up.

Elections are also at risk in some parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which are home to a whopping 5.2 million voters.

Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk together are home to 18 percent of Ukraine’s voters. But an April 23 nationwide poll – excluding Crimea – by four major sociological groups found that the top presidential candidate, Petro Poroshenko, would win by a margin of 37 percent in the second round of election.

The two most troublesome electoral districts in mainland Ukraine are in the cities of Donetsk and Sloviansk. District election commissions have failed to assemble there because they face intimidation, and sometimes violence, from the Kremlin-backed separatists who control those territories.

“We will take all the necessary measures so that the elections in the southeast don’t happen,” Vyacheslav Ponomariov, leader of separatists in Sloviansk, told Russia’s Gazeta.ru.

But Mahera said that the two district commissions have time until May 6 to start their work. He did not, however, dare to predict how many polling stations would be disrupted. But under Ukrainian law, it won’t really matter.

“If at least one polling station in Ukraine holds the elections, they will be considered legitimate,” Chernenko says, referring to Ukraine’s law on elections.

Mahera believes that despite all the troubles, voter turnout will be at least on par with previous elections, or 70 percent. “In the west the turnout could be much bigger given the rise in patriotic sentiment, while in the east it will probably be lower,” he said.

Polls indicate his expectations are right. They show that some 85 percent of Ukrainians will go to the polls.

Mahera also expects the election to be cleaner than the previous ones. “The biggest challenge we have comes from the outside,” he says, referring to Russian interference.

Poroshenko widens his lead in presidential polls

Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]. Staff writer Lily Hyde contributed reporting.