Ukraine: Donetsk votes for new reality in country that does not exist. The election for the region’s prime minister has given hope to older generations that they will never again be part of Ukraine. (what a detestable scam, old Soviet era crony holdovers with an illegitimate vote for a new nation within the Ukraine nation but ultimately their goal is to secede + be annexed into Russia as a satellite republic...) With armed men in the polling station, no voter lists, and international observers coming from an organisation concocted the night before the vote, these were no normal elections. But then the Donetsk People’s Republic is no normal country. It is no country at all, according to most of the world. But the vote for prime minister here and in neighbouring Luhansk region on Sunday was one more step towards creating a new reality on the ground and carving out a chunk of Ukraine that will no longer controlled by Kiev. “The elected representatives received a mandate to solve the practical tasks regarding the restoration of normal life in the regions,” the foreign ministry said late on Sunday, according to Interfax. The ministry said there should now be dialogue between the rebel regions and Kiev, but there is little appetite for negotiations in Donetsk. The vote came more than six months after a handful of gunmen began taking over administrative buildings in several eastern cities. Since then, the Ukrainian army and volunteer battalions have fought a bloody war against rebels backed with Russian firepower in a conflict that has claimed well over 3,000 lives, many of them civilians. An agreement in Minsk, Belarus, in September provided for a ceasefire, and a 12-point plan was drafted to allow the territories to remain inside Ukraine but with special status. Several weeks later, the plan remains on paper, with each side accusing the other of numerous violations. All the while, the areas under rebel control drift further away from a solution in which they could be part of Ukraine. In the days leading up to the vote, isolated clashes between Ukrainian and rebel forces continued, including just outside Donetsk, where a group of Ukrainian soldiers continue to hold on to part of the airport despite continual rebel assault. The rumble of artillery from the airport is audible in central Donetsk most days. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Europe’s main election observing body, said it would have nothing to do with the elections. Undeterred, a newly created organisation appeared, named the ASCE, and mainly made up of far-right European politicians, who arrived and gave the elections two thumbs up. The fact that neo-Nazi European politicians are the only people east Ukraine has found to back its supposed uprising against the “fascist” Ukrainian authorities is one of the many paradoxes of the situation. Despite the surreal nature of the vote, there is no doubt that, among the older generation at least, there was great enthusiasm for it, perhaps less as an endorsement of the Donetsk republic and more as a message to Kiev that the region would never again be part of Ukraine. In Ilovaysk, which saw some of the worst battles of the conflict, with hundreds of Ukrainian forces surrounded by rebel and Russian troops in a siege that lasted weeks, there was a huge crowd at School No 13, one of three polling stations to open in the town. Residents said they were voting for a “peaceful future”, which they hoped would eventually involve the region joining together with Russia. Most people said they would vote for Alexander Zakharchenko, the acting rebel leader who took over in August after what seemed an attempt by Moscow to replace Russian nationals with locals. Zakharchenko has run on a vague platform promising independence, peace and economic prosperity. On Monday morning, the rebels announced that with all the ballots counted, Zakharchenko had won a convincing victory with around 80% of the vote. While many, especially among the older generation, have nostalgia for the Soviet Union and see contemporary Russia as its successor, the attitude towards the Donetsk authorities is ambivalent, with many people quietly mentioning that the armed gunmen who run the region now have allowed themselves many liberties. Whether the rebels and their Russian backers are satisfied with what they have gained is not clear. There are persistent rumours that the Donetsk forces may attempt to take the key port city of Mariupol, part of Donetsk region under Ukrainian control. Zakharchenko said last week that if Ukraine did not agree to hand over the city, the rebels would take it by force, and in recent days there have been numerous sightings of a large military convoy, apparently from Russia, travelling though the Donetsk region. theguardian/world/2014/nov/02/donetsk-peoples-republic-luhansk-ukraine-prime-minister-elections?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 07:56:01 +0000