Conflict-Stricken Ukraine Prepares for Elections
KYIV – Ukraine on Sunday will hold its first legislative elections since clashes erupted last April between government forces and pro-Russia separatists, who will boycott the vote in the eastern provinces they hold.
Kyiv has said the boycott in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk will not affect the legitimacy of the process.
Before the conflict started, around 6.5 million people lived in the region, around 15 percent of the total population.
An estimated one million people have fled the area and sought refuge in neighboring Russia or other Ukrainian regions because of the fighting.
“Here, there will be no elections,” said Andrei Purguin, deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
Donetsk and Lugansk are scheduled to choose their own parliaments and leaders in a separate election scheduled for Nov. 2.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has stressed the importance of full transparency in the Oct. 26 elections in areas controlled by Kyiv in the two rebel regions.
The presence of large Ukrainian military units in the area, which is under an undeclared state of emergency, casts a shadow over the voting process there.
Since the election of Poroshenko on May 25, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have made inroads in various rebel areas.
In the May poll, the turnout in Lugansk and Donetsk was 4.70 and 3.22 percent, respectively, out of a total of around five million registered voters, according to Kyiv’s Central Electoral Committee.
Now the turnout is expected to increase, after Kyiv took control of 50 percent of rural areas, although the main cities remain in the hands of the separatists.
Lugansk’s Kyiv-appointed governor, Hennadiy Moskal, estimated it would range between 35 percent and 40 percent and said the campaign was going on normally.
But he warned if violence flared “less people will head to the voting polls.”
Poroshenko has issued a law giving special legal status and a three-year autonomy to territories controlled by the separatists.
“We see it as a positive step because it means that not only Kyiv acknowledges the existence of the problem, but also that it cannot be solved with previous methods,” Purguin told the RIA Novosty Russian news agency.
However, Purguin said the Donetsk People’s Republic will not abide by this law, which sets local elections on Dec. 7.
The crisis in Ukraine broke out last November, after then president Viktor Yanukovych decided to sign a trade agreement with Russia instead of the European Union, sparking widespread protests in Kyiv and the pro-European Western part of the country that finally led to his ouster in February this year.
The new leadership was not recognized in the east of the country, where a majority of Ukrainians of Russian origin lives, and gave rise to an armed insurgency against authorities in Kyiv.
A ceasefire agreed in Minsk with Russian and European mediation on Sept. 5 did not put an end to the fighting, as each party accuses the other of committing violations.
According to the latest UN figures, 3,660 people have been killed in Ukraine since the conflict started.