Kyiv and pro- Russia separatists set to clash over legitimacy of vote
Referendum: Issues include lack of outside scrutiny, improper ballots, no voter rolls
‘ It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the vote.” That notorious quote , which may or may not have been uttered by Comrade Josef Stalin, could turn out to be particularly relevant after Sunday’s plebiscite in the self- proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, where Ukraine’s tumultuous existential crisis is being fought.
The likely next stage in the increasingly bloody, highstakes dispute between the Ukrainian government and pro- Russia separatists in the east of the country will be over the legitimacy of the referendum, which has already been condemned as “a criminal farce” by the acting government in Kyiv and as illegal by most of the world.
With no neutral oversight at any stage of the voting process, which was conducted in many places with security provided by the self- styled Army of the Southeast, the chances for fraud were obvious. It was also likely that many voters opposed to the referendum were “too afraid to vote,” said a 19- yearold student who gave her name only as Darya. Nevertheless, she and her boyfriend, Stanislav, were set to go and mark “No” on their ballots.
“I do not support the occupation of this territory by separatists,” Stanislav said. “I have no idea what separation really means. I want a fair vote, but I think that it could mostly be falsified.”
But theirs were minority voices, at least in public, on Sunday. Their concerns did not matter at all to most of those in the Donbas coal- mining region who voted “Yes” to splitting from Kyiv.
“Our country needs to be free and happy and to do that we need to be free of nationalists and fascists who have seized power in Kyiv,” said Larissa Papazova shortly after she had voted.
The 67- year- old cardiologist likened the behaviour of those in Kyiv to that of Nazi Germany. What she hoped for, she said, was to enjoy the same happiness and sense of protection she found during a visit last month to Crimea, which voted to quit Ukraine in a referendum in March and was quickly annexed by Russia.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed to dampen hopes of a repeat in eastern Ukraine last week when he shocked his many ethnic Russian admirers here by urging them to delay their referendum so that talks with Kyiv could take place.
Papazova’s 74- year- old friend, Leonid Goldman, who is also a doctor and who chose not to vote, noted wryly that “perhaps Russia needs to digest Crimea first, before taking eastern Ukraine.”
The apparent distancing of Putin from their cause has deeply upset many people here. In an act of defiance, their self- acclaimed leaders went ahead with the referendum anyway.
Voicing an opinion heard a lot in the past few days, a beefy miner who said his name was Andrei, thundered: “Putin has nothing to do with Donbas. We think for ourselves.” But the fact remains that Putin’s unexpected shift adds another level of uncertainty to a hair- trigger situation that could slide into civil war.
The wording on Sunday’s ballot is unlikely to resolve the crisis. It was changed several times last week but remained murky and open to interpretation. In Russian and Ukrainian, it read: “Do you support the act of state self- reliance of the Donetsk People’s Republic?” This has left some voters wondering whether this was intended to suggest greater autonomy from Kyiv, full independence, or a Crimea- style union with Russia.
A delirious, party- like atmosphere with Russian flags everywhere prevailed in Crimea on the day it voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine. There had been such a crush of voters that some polls had to be kept open well after they had been scheduled to close.
The mood was much more subdued, even sour, in Donetsk, with no sense that there was anything to celebrate. No violence was reported aside from the killing of a separatist in a town to the west of Donetsk.
Voter turnout was higher Sunday than anyone, including foreign journalists, had expected. But it was unlikely to be anything like the 70 percent figure claimed late Sunday by referendum organizers.
Serious concerns with the snap vote included the lack of outside scrutiny during the three- day count. Organizers also claimed to have printed three million ballots, but as they carried no markings, there was no way to verify this figure. A further shortcoming was that there were no voter rolls and walk- ins were allowed to vote anywhere, making it relatively easy for someone to cast more than one ballot.
Skewing a fair assessment of turnout was the fact that voting likely did not take place everywhere in the region. Some journalists reached cities such as Slavyansk and Mariupol, where despite brutal clashes recently between government forces and separatists, a few polling stations were open and packed with voters. But because of the security situation it was impossible to get a sense of how widespread voting was outside the regional capital.
Surveys by Ukrainians and international polling firms this spring found that only about onethird of the voters in Donetsk oblast favoured independence, although a majority wanted far greater autonomy from Kyiv than they have today. Surveys conducted in Luhansk oblast, where a similar referendum on independence was held Sunday, produced similar support for remaining part of Ukraine.