Members of a local election commission, accompanied by a serviceman, visit voters during early voting in Russia's presidential election in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict on March 14.STRINGER/Getty Images
Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied regions of the country are being coerced by occupying forces to vote in Russia’s presidential election, according to officials from those areas.
Voting in southern and eastern Ukrainian regions – Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk – that Russia illegally annexed in the fall of 2022, but which they do not fully control, is under way and will conclude on Sunday. Ukrainian officials said so-called election commission representatives accompanied by armed Russian soldiers walk the streets and go door to door, ordering residents to vote.
Petro Andriushchenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, said mobile election groups with soldiers carrying automatic weapons have been approaching residents.
“Everyone understands the level of danger,” he said. “The question of avoiding elections is not even raised.”
Ekaterina Schulmann, a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said Russia’s Central Election Commission has registered 4.6 million voters in the four regions – despite the fact the wartime populations in the areas under Russian control are estimated at 3.3 million total.
Prof. Schulmann predicted the Kremlin would claim to win more than 85 per cent of the vote in those regions.
“It’s not a peaceful territory, so you can’t have elections there. It’s all completely fake,” she said, adding that the appearance of an overwhelming vote for Mr. Putin from the occupied parts of Ukraine would also serve Kremlin propaganda by showing how enthusiastic the residents were to come under Russian rule.
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The international community has denounced Russia’s presidential election in occupied territories in Ukraine. The chairs of parliamentary committees on foreign affairs, including from Canada, the United States and a number of European countries, issued a joint statement saying they “unequivocally reject the legitimacy of the elections.”
“Russia intends to extend these elections to the territories it has occupied and illegally annexed in Ukraine, in what appears to be an attempt to legitimize its temporary occupation of Ukrainian territory,” it says.
The statement says that the signatories emphasize that conducting elections in Ukraine’s temporarily occupied and illegally annexed regions is “a stark breach of international law and the principles of the United Nations Charter, and Ukraine’s inalienable independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Such actions, it said, will not be recognized by the international community.
Meanwhile, residents of occupied regions continue to be frightened and humiliated.
Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of Enerhodar in occupied Zaporizhzhia, said groups made up of locals and accompanied by armed soldiers wearing masks and balaclavas go door to door telling people to vote. He said relatives of those who still live in Enerhodar have told him what’s happening there.
“Of course, many are afraid and they are not able to refuse because for such views you can go to the torture chamber,” he said.
When asked if he had heard accounts of torture as a result of refusing to vote, Mr. Orlov said he hadn’t, but he had heard of such accounts after forced votes in the sham referendums that set the pretext for Mr. Putin to annex the region in 2022.
“It is possible that this is also happening in these elections, but such cases are still unknown,” he said.
Ivan Fedorov, the head of Zaporizhzhia Oblast Military Administration, said it’s important to understand that they are fake elections because elections are about democracy and choice, which is impossible in occupied territories.
“Our citizens are afraid and that’s why they take part in these fake elections,” he said.
He said he has heard from people who live there who ask for advice on what to do. “But we have the same answer – if it is dangerous for your life and health, okay vote … because Russians can kill and wound our citizens if they will show resistance openly.”
With reports from Mark MacKinnon and Kateryna Hatsenko