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DNR and LNR elections: Why Russia held polls in Ukraine’s occupied territories [1]

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Date: 2023-09

But there are still more potential voters than passport holders. In Zaporizhzhia, for example, the authorities said that 300,000 passports were issued, but the election commission printed 500,000 ballot papers.

To solve this discrepancy, residents of the occupied regions were allowed to vote using Ukrainian passports, ID cards or even driving licences, provided that they could prove they lived in the area. In Donetsk and Luhansk, residents could present DPR and LPR (rather than Russian) passports, which had been distributed there since 2015, as well as military identity cards of the pro-Russian paramilitaries known as the “People’s Militia”.

The Kremlin persistently calls the entire population of the occupied territories “Russian citizens”. This extends to people evacuated or deported to Russia, who could vote at 329 “extraterritorial polling stations” within Russia.

Even residents of settlements that have been liberated by Ukraine could vote, via the ‘mobile voter’ mechanism that allows voting at any polling station in Russia or occupied Ukrainian territory. This option was aimed primarily at people who fled with the Russian army when areas were liberated. Thus, an election was organised for the Donetsk city of Liman, even though it was liberated by Ukraine last year.

Both the organisers and the voters risked their lives to take part in the elections: over the past month, the polling stations in the occupied regions have regularly come under fire. During the pseudo-referendums in the occupied territories in autumn 2022, the authorities warned that “terrorist attacks” could take place, and Russian security forces detained Ukrainian sabotage groups in almost every city.

A year ago, Ukraine’s security services disavowed these kinds of operations, even in off-the-record conversations, but now they apparently consider elections a legitimate target. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has admitted being behind attacks on polling stations and staff in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

On 31 August, Ukrainian media, citing SBU sources, reported a large number of wounded after a drone raid on a meeting of 30 members of the electoral committee in Kamianka-Dniprovska, a town close to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. In response, the occupation administration asserted that only one guard was injured at the empty children’s cultural centre, but that “80 children could have been present”. Ukrainian drone strikes on polling stations in Skadovsk and Nova Zburivka in Kherson were also allegedly unsuccessful.

Ukraine elections and referendums are a crime

SBU spokesperson Artem Dekhtyarenko, speaking to openDemocracy in early September ahead of the vote, called on Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories not to “take part in a fake plebiscite and thereby not act in favour of the aggressor”. However, he promised not to punish the mere act of voting, given that armed Russian soldiers insist on it, including by visiting homes and workplaces.

But he said that active participation – such as working in an election commission, being an election observer, or actually standing as a candidate – would be considered a serious crime.

So far, only six people have been accused of this offence. Last week, the SBU accused the head of Kherson’s electoral commission Marina Zakharova, her deputy Sergei Vysotin and secretary Irina Kravchenko of collaboration, promising to imprison them for ten years. The head of Russia’s Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, her deputy Nikolay Bulaev and secretary Natalya Budarina have been threatened with life imprisonment because their actions are interpreted as a violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, though of course it is very unlikely they would be in a position to face action.

By the end of August, the SBU had managed to identify by name more than 3,500 “active participants” in the elections in the four occupied regions. However, judging by published data, up t0 ten times that many people were actually involved (if not yet named).

For example, in Luhansk region, 5,260 members of territorial and precinct commissions organised the vote. According to the local electoral commission, 336 candidates stood for the legislative assembly of the LPR, and another 3,241 people for 28 municipal councils. Therefore, in one region alone, there are 8,800 “active participants”, not counting election observers.

This means that the illegal elections in the occupied territories are the most widespread crime committed by Russia since the full-scale invasion last year. The SBU’s Dekhtyarenko has promised that his agency will find all accomplices and bring them to justice, at least in absentia.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/russia-occupied-ukraine-pseudo-elections-kherson-donetsk-luhansk-zaporizhzhia/

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