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People occupying administration buildings (both locals and tourists from Russia) in Donetsk, Lugansk and other cities chanted “Russia” and waved the tricolor of the Russian Federation.
The proclamation of the “People’s Republics” seemed to them only a transitional stage leading to the final opening within the Russian Federation. Only the Crimean scenario did not happen again, war broke out and the so-called “Lugansk People’s Republic” and the “Donetsk People’s Republic” acquired a very strange status: their sovereignty is not recognized even by Moscow, and all efforts to “establish popular representations” on the territory of European countries, writes delfi.ru.
Today, a significant part of the population of the occupied Donbass has up to three passports. Ukraine: received even before the war. Some keep it “for everything”, and most need it when traveling to territory controlled by Kiev: to visit relatives, buy deficit goods, withdraw a pension (Ukraine pays pensions to all pensioners living in occupied Donbass).
Local: the colors of the flag of the “republic”. It is a document without legal force, issued by the local administration without much enthusiasm, but when it comes time to change (receive) a new document, there is no other option, so you have to become a “citizen” of a non-legal entity. recognized. territory.
Well, Russia – at first it was a kind of confirmation of a special status for the privileged, only received by deserving separatists and other distinguished officials. In practice, the essence of such a document is that it provides the opportunity to smoothly move to Russia, to legally live and work there. For most of the busy and depressed Donbass residents who are disappearing, this is simply a one-way ticket of sorts.
Only in the last two years has the pace of “Russian passports” increased significantly in the occupied Donbas. In almost all budget organizations, Russian citizenship was demanded almost by force. The closer the elections got, the greater the demand for those passports.
Denis Kazanski, a Ukrainian blogger living in Donetsk, shared snapshots of correspondence in which students from the Donetsk People’s Republic were forced to register to vote online in the Russian State Duma elections through the SNILS system. .
Judging from the election dividends, the occupied Donbass is just a drop in the bucket. It is practically impossible to accurately count the population there. According to estimates by the Eastern Rights Protection Group, by the end of the summer, almost 700,000 people received a passport from the Russian Federation there. people.
According to Kirill Vyšinskis, a member of the Russian President’s Human Rights Council and director of the executive agency Rossiya Sevodnia, more than 150,000 people voted remotely in the parliamentary elections of the Russian Federation. Donbass residents holding Russian passports. Another part of the people voted in the Rostov region.
To this end, 835 buses and 12 additional train trips were organized during the elections. In any case, even after all efforts have been mobilized, these areas represent only a tenth of the percentage, which is less than a statistical error. Neither the ruling United Russia nor any other Russian political force is occupied by the occupied Donbass.
In 2016, Russia included Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in its elections. Thousands of Russian passports have long been distributed there, and voting, despite objections from Chisinau and Tbilisi, is carried out from the shoulder: electoral commissions are being established and polling stations are functioning.
The busy Donbass behaved somewhat differently. There they voted online or took an “excursion” to the Rostov region. In all respects, this is nothing more than an image campaign: the peoples of the republics that have declared their self-government want to be shown that “Russia does not leave its own to fate.”
Voting in the parliamentary elections of the Russian Federation will not bring any change to the life of the aforementioned territories, but it will give the owners of a double-headed eagle passion to feel part of Russia, to establish some emotional connection, at least in theory for be part of the Russian Federation.
People living in unrecognized territories are well aware that this fictitious local sovereignty is guaranteed by Russia, so they will vote for “peace and stability”, which is heralded by Russian propaganda.
Another reason is to mock the country from which the territories have been temporarily removed. Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have publicly stated that holding elections to the Russian authorities in the occupied territories is an unforgivable mistake.
The reaction of the international community is quite moderate: representatives of the European Union mainly speak of electoral irregularities during the parliamentary elections in the Russian Federation and condemn the decision to hold elections in Crimea and Donbass. Whether such a condemnation will lead to any concrete result – the non-recognition of the vote and, in principle, of the new Duma – remains an open question. Each country will decide on its own. A full-scale boycott and sanctions are not worth waiting for.
Still, Kiev is ready to take sanctions. They have already been announced by the Secretary of the Security Council of Ukraine, Alexei Danilov.
“We are convinced that in those territories (ie Crimea and Donbass) the Russian Federation does not have the right to organize its own vote. Therefore, everyone involved in this process – members of constituency commissions, agitators, candidates, observers – will be the target of sanctions from our country. Today we have compiled the first list of such people. “Without exception, sanctions in our field of law will be applied to all in the near future by presidential decree,” he said.
The sanctions list already includes 53 members of territorial electoral commissions, 33 candidates for the State Duma of the Russian Federation, and the list will be expanded in the near future. People who enter are prohibited from entering Ukraine, they lose the right to use property on their territory.
And at that time, the pro-Russian forces in Ukraine continue to blame Kiev for everything. It expresses the idea that the people of the occupied Donbass are voting in the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation for a very simple reason: because they cannot participate in the political process in Ukraine.
This is a rather old song about the need to “listen to the Donbass” and sit at the negotiating table with the leaders of the illegal formations, hand them over to the authorities throughout Ukraine and start the federalization process.
The Kremlin also offers to do it without curtains. Clearly, Kiev denies this possibility. In response, Moscow, for all its conviction of loyalty to the Minsk accords format, is demonstrating a conflict-freezing course on the Transnistrian scene.
Today, the occupied Donbass is linked to Russia at the navel of military, humanitarian and financial aid. Everything in the republics: from educational programs in educational institutions to the currency (in the “Lugansk People’s Republic” and in the “Donetsk People’s Republic” the official currency is the Russian ruble) – unified with the Russian Federation.
The issuance of passports and the promotion of participation in parliamentary elections is another element of the “short leash” policy. The main objective remains to distance the occupied territories as much as possible from the “mother”, to tie them up and to avoid complicating the reintegration process in the event of a possible return.
All of this continues for decades in Transnistria and the Caucasus. The Kremlin’s political tech experts have such plans for the Donbass “republics.”
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