Greetings from Novorossiya: Eyewitness to the War in Ukraine by Pieniążek Paweł; Markoff Małgorzata; Markoff John

Author:Pieniążek, Paweł; Markoff, Małgorzata; Markoff, John
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

“There are many people who can’t vote in their own places or who work in Donetsk, so we have offered them this opportunity,” explains Larisa from the polling commission. Everything would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that those people can vote in every polling station, because nobody can possibly check if a particular voter hasn’t already voted somewhere else. With some ingenuity, even someone officially registered as living in Donetsk will be able to vote in several places without a problem.

Roman Lagin, the president of the Central Election Commission of the Donetsk Republic, claims that in Donetsk proper there are 118 polling stations and in the entire region there are 1,527. But it looks as if these numbers are made up. A day before the referendum I asked the separatists’ representatives if a list of the polling stations existed. They answered that it didn’t. Until the very end, as well, nobody knew the locations of the polling stations. Some Donetsk residents were completely lost. They would come to where voting used to take place in the past, but the polling stations were not there anymore.

“Where is a polling station?” a forty-something Donetsk resident is asking loudly. The passersby are trying to help him, but it turns out that they themselves don’t know where to vote either.

Thanks to the limited number of polling stations it was easier to create the impression of crowds rushing en masse to vote. Many journalists attended only the opening of the polling places. The most committed groups of voters were already waiting there. These were the avid champions of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The polling stations were open from eight in the morning to eleven at night. Later in the day the turnout was smaller. The ballot boxes were half filled, or even less.

“Seventy percent of the people have already voted here,” a member of one commission tries to convince me at five in the afternoon. The number of ballots in the boxes proves otherwise. In each station I hear stories about the successful turnout.

I ask Larisa from the polling commission if I can stay when the votes are counted. “Nobody can stay, not even observers, just the members of the commission,” she states with great satisfaction. According to her, this indicates that if the commission is left alone with the ballot boxes, the elections are honest. She has managed to throw me off guard, so I don’t ask another question.

Even Russia hasn’t sent any observers to the referendum. Voting in Donbas is monitored only by the supporters of the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.

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