By Vestnik Kavkaza
Late October and early November were the time of elections in Ukraine. On October 26th the early parliamentary elections took place. The voter turnout was a bit more than 52 percent, which was lower than in 2007 and 2010. The elections were not held on territories which were controlled by the militants, so the interests of the southeast of the country are not represented in the parliament. Meanwhile, on November 2nd elections of heads of the self-declared Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and deputies of People’s Councils were held. After the processing of 100 percent of protocols, the current Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko was elected the head of the DPR, while in the LPR the current head of the republic Igor Plotnitsky won the elections.
Now the People’s Assembly of the DPR plans to adopt a law on self-administration, according to which by the end of the year administrations of the cities, towns and villages of Donbas will be elected.
Moscow has a moderate position toward both the elections to the Verkhnovna Rada and elections in Novorossia. “We respect the choice of the voters from the southeast, their decision to elect their government representatives. This opens up new possibilities, first of all for initiating contacts between Kiev, Donetsk and Luhansk, and helps to prevent the resumption of hostilities,” the acting chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, Vladimir Dzhabarov, thinks.
“The newly-elected head of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic said that he was willing to cooperate with Kiev and other Ukrainian regions on all issues - political, economic as well as social - and this is provided by the 8th and 9th articles of the Minsk Agreement,” the Russian senator stresses.
As for the elections to the Verkhovna Rada, Dzhabarov says that even though Russia has recognized these elections, he cannot say that they were absolutely legitimate: “These elections were not participated in by the southeastern regions, since they simply did not attend these elections. Secondly, we know how the election campaign in Ukraine was conducted. I believe that many people simply did not go to vote because they were intimidated and terrorized by thugs from Right Sector, the supporters of the "party of war" and nationalists”.
Dzhabarov expected that Poroshenko's Bloc would have been be more successful: “Poroshenko was elected for a reason on May 25. It was a protest vote, people were against the "party of war", and at that time Poroshenko represented someone who could bring order to Ukraine and restore peace there, as well as establish a dialogue with the southeast. Unfortunately, nothing has happened. Poroshenko promised before the elections that there would be an end to the conflict in the southeast in three months. However, his election marked one of the most active phases of hostilities. I think that his bloc did not receive many votes in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada because his potential voters are people who did not want to vote for Yatsenyuk, but who did not support Poroshenko precisely because he had not lived up to their expectations as president. There was a turnout of 52%. The people who could have voted for Poroshenko are the lacking percents, although most likely these people remained supporters of opposition parties. But at the moment they do not support Poroshenko because, apparently, he has not lived up to their expectations.”
