Ukraine and allies condemn Russia’s plan to hold presidential election in occupied areas

Nato and senior deputies from more than 20 states, including Ireland, have condemned Russia’s plan to hold presidential elections this week in occupied areas of Ukraine, as Kyiv urged people living in those regions to avoid polling stations for their own safety.

Russia occupies almost a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognised territory, including Crimea and parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, after a decade of fighting in eastern Ukraine and two years of full-scale war.

Moscow demands that any peace deal must recognise Kremlin control over those regions, and says occupying soldiers and civilians living there will vote in elections from Friday-Sunday to further extend the 24-year rule of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“As chairs of our respective parliamentary committees on foreign affairs, we emphasise that conducting elections in Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories and illegally annexed regions is a stark breach of international law,” representatives of 23 countries including the United States, Canada, Germany and Britain said in a joint statement on Thursday.

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“We firmly denounce Russia’s imperialistic actions and its ongoing aggression against Ukraine . . . We unequivocally reject the legitimacy of elections being conducted by Russia in the occupied Ukrainian territories. Such actions . . . are entirely illegitimate and will not be recognised by the international community,” they added.

Fine Gael TD Charlie Flanagan, who chairs the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and defence, said on social media that he was “pleased to join international colleagues in condemnation of sham Russian elections”.

No genuine critics of Mr Putin and his war in Ukraine have been allowed to run in the election and Russia’s most influential opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic jail last month after barely surviving a poisoning in 2020 by the Kremlin’s security services.

[ Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny dies in Arctic jail, Russian prison service says ]

In Brussels, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said a long-running crackdown on Russia’s opposition movement, independent media and open political discussion meant the election “will not be free and fair”.

“Russian citizens cannot count on freedom and fairness, because opposition politicians are dead, in jail or exiled, and the press is not free,” he said. “And of course, Russia’s attempts to organise any part of an election in occupied regions of Ukraine are completely illegal, violating international law.”

Moscow-installed officials are encouraging people in occupied areas to vote and have said a ballot box can be brought to their homes if necessary. In previous Russian-held votes in occupied areas, armed men have often accompanied election officials.

“Even early voting was conducted with the military, and armed representatives of the occupiers will be present at polling stations. All to ensure that residents make the ‘right choice’,” the exiled Ukrainian council of occupied Mariupol said on social media, alongside footage of what it said was an arrest staged to intimidate local people.

No major international or independent Russian election monitoring groups will be able to observe the vote, and non-transparent online voting will be used in 29 Russian regions and in Ukraine’s Crimea, which the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014.

Occupation officials in Ukraine are already claiming improbably high turnout figures from early voting – more than 45 per cent in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia.

Mr Putin urged people across Russia – and in areas of Ukraine that it claims to have incorporated – to vote, and recalled “referendums” held last year in which those regions supposedly chose to accept Kremlin rule. Those events were dismissed by Ukraine and its allies and recognised by only a handful of Russia’s closest allies.

“People . . . who voted for reunification with Russia at the referendums in the most difficult conditions understand this only too well and will also make their choice on these days,” he said. “Our soldiers on the front line will also take part in the voting. They are defending the motherland, demonstrating courage and heroism. And they are setting an example for all of us by taking part in the election.”

Parliament in Kyiv passed a resolution on Thursday calling on governments, parliaments and major organisations around the world to condemn the elections, and Ukraine’s foreign ministry encouraged people in occupied areas to avoid polling stations.

“Forcing millions of Ukrainian citizens who live in temporarily occupied territories or who have been forcibly transferred to Russian Federation territory to participate in the so-called elections is . . . illegal,” the ministry said.

“We urge Ukrainian citizens who live in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine or are forced to stay in the territory of the Russian Federation not to participate in the ‘pseudo-elections’, it added.

“On election days, we urge them to avoid crowded places near ‘polling stations’ and the military infrastructure of the Russian occupation forces for their own safety, given the Russian authorities’ proclivity for provocations.”

The pro-Kyiv Yellow Ribbon movement of underground activists in Crimea claimed to have information that Russian forces were planning “terrorist attacks and provocations” to injure civilians in occupied territories and then blame the incidents on Ukraine.

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