A prelude to a farce: Pre-arranged ballots for Kremlin-backed breakaway regions

DONETSK, Ukraine â€“ 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. 

Pictured is Roman Lyagin (left) on Nov. 1, a native of Donetsk city, who is the self-proclaimed election commissioner for a part of Donetsk Oblast that wants to secede from Ukraine, supported by the Kremlin and reinforced by Russian intelligence agencies, regular Russian military, proxies, including locally recruited and trained militants. (Anastasia Vlasova)

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. 

Kyiv Post+ is a special project covering Russia's war against Ukraine and the aftermath of the EuroMaidan Revolution.

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.