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Russia is running a sham election in occupied Ukraine [1]

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Date: 2023-09

It’s election season in Russia, with gubernatorial, regional council and other local races taking place – and a sham vote in the Russian-occupied territories in southern and eastern Ukraine.

With Russia seeking to retain control of Ukrainian regions including Donetsk, Luhansk and parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, the ‘elections’ look achingly familiar. They’re an attempt to legitimise the Russian occupation.

After its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia stripped election officials in the occupied areas of their powers. Now, the candidates for councils in these areas are a mix of pro-Russian local residents and Russian citizens.

The local candidates either hail from Ukrainian political parties with some kind of pro-Russia leaning or are taxi drivers and security guards without any previous political experience. And the other 42% of the candidates are Russian citizens without any previous connection to the region, according to a report by the Eastern Human Rights Group, an association of lawyers and activists from Ukraine’s eastern oblasts, and the non-profit Institute for Strategic Research and Security, which is made up of experts on Kremlinology and Russian policy towards Ukraine.

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United Russia, Russia’s ruling party, understandably had its pick of the candidates and even held primary-style pre-election contests in the occupied territories.

The influx of outside candidates indicates some of the Kremlin’s main problems in holding elections in Ukraine. For the most part, local residents do not want to go to the polls. The fact that the Russian election commission has permitted residents to use their Ukrainian passports to vote – after a huge four-month campaign to force them to take up Russian passports – is damning.

Local residents have also refused to run for election as candidates of Russian political parties for ‘legislative assemblies’ in the occupied territories. And that means the Kremlin’s “political technologists”, a euphemism for the well-developed industry of political manipulation in the former Soviet states, have their work cut out for them.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/russia-sham-election-ukraine-occupied-territories-donestsk-luhansk-kremlin/

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