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Steady Turnout of Early Voters in Eastern Ukraine Chaos in Eastern Ukraine as Separatists Vote
(about 5 hours later)
DONETSK, Ukraine — A steady stream of voters turned out at several polling stations Sunday for snap elections intended to legitimize two self-declared new countries in eastern Ukraine, a showing that will aid the secessionist cause. DONETSK, Ukraine — Snap referendums conducted by secessionists in eastern Ukraine in hopes of legitimizing their cause drew large crowds on Sunday, and unfolded in a carnival-like atmosphere that was celebratory in some places and lethally violent in others.
At polling stations in Donetsk, the provincial capital of one of the two regions holding referendums, all the ballots visible in the clear boxes had votes supporting local autonomy. In Donetsk, the capital of one of the two provinces where pro-Russian separatists have declared “people’s republics,” there were balloons and loudspeakers playing Soviet-era songs, and families came to vote with children in tow. But outside the provincial capitals, the voting took place in such a state of raw chaos that in one town a man was shot to death by pro-Ukrainian paramilitaries on a sidewalk outside a polling station.
The turnout in the capital was no guarantee people in towns elsewhere would also show support for the separatists, and even in Donetsk many who favored Ukrainian unity said they would stay home rather than vote. Separatist organizers of the voting say they would announce their counts late Sunday evening, but the results were a foregone conclusion. At polling stations in Donetsk and Slovyansk, another separatist-controlled city, nearly all the ballots that could be seen in the transparent ballot boxes were marked yes, in favor of loosing the province’s ties to the national government in Kiev. Many people who favored Ukrainian unity and opposed the separatists said they would stay home rather than cast ballots.
Voting in Slovyansk was orderly, with polling sites across the city busy in the morning as voters formed lines dozens deep. The referendums were roundly condemned from the outset, both in Kiev and internationally, as elections that could not possibly be free and fair, given the political turmoil enveloping the region. But while the results were unlikely to be accepted by anyone but the organizers and their Russian patrons as reflecting the democratic will of the majority, the turnout on Sunday appeared to at least demonstrate that the separatists had substantial popular support.
Ballots were visible in tall transparent boxes and the overwhelming number of them were marked “Yes” in support of the referendum’s sole question. But by early afternoon, the crowds had dissipated, with only a few hours left, voter lists visible on tables showed a turnout no higher than 30 percent. The voting was run in an air of hurried improvisation. Ballots were run off on photocopiers. In one city, voting booths consisted of red drapes stapled to wooden frames, and had been thrown together the day before. Propaganda posters supporting secession adorned polling booths in some places, and ballot papers were handed out together with sausage sandwiches to draw voters.
Many at the polls expressed disgust with the interim government in Kiev and exasperation with the instability brought about by the revolution that overthrew former President Viktor F. Yanukovych in February. “I am voting because I don’t want war,” said one participant, Roman Agrisov, a 40-year-old steelworker, as he stood in a line that was three people wide and a hundred yards long, snaking out the door of Middle School No. 32 in Donetsk.
“My government bombed me, so of course I’m for the referendum,” said Viktor Ritko, a pensioner. “I want to go there, where life is better, and not live anymore with these fascists.” He and some fellow voters said they thought the referendums would deter the authorities in Kiev from pressing military operations to reassert control in the region. Others were less sure whether it would tamp down the unrest or stoke it further, but said they were voting anyway, to reject the interim government in Kiev, which they consider illegitimate.
But even supporters of the referendum strained to explain what, exactly, they were voting for. “We should be part of Russia,” said Lisa Batisheva, 26, a nurse who waited in line at School No. 12. “Ukraine is weak, and everybody, the Europeans and the Russians, want something from it. As long as we are part of Ukraine, we will have problems.”
“The new authorities should have come here first to explain to the people what they want and to ask what we want,” said Roman Gersh, an unemployed auto mechanic who voted in favor of the referendum at School No. 18. “I want a united Ukraine, but with a government that listens to the people.” It was hard to gauge whether there were lines at the polls because only a few polling stations were open, or because of widespread support. There were no rolls of eligible voters, and only very slight precautions were taken against people voting more than once, a common form of electoral fraud in former Soviet states that is known as “carousel voting.”
“Call our country Zimbabwe, as long as we live normally and have jobs,” he added. Tatyana Us, a volunteer election official, referred to the system as “open list” voting. She said officials would compare handwritten lists of people who voted after the polls closed, and would deduct one vote each time they found a person who had voted twice at different polling stations. She did not know whether a yes or no vote would be deducted.
Sunday’s vote showed the rebels have some support in Slovyansk, although nowhere near the “100 percent” predicted Saturday by the city’s self-appointed mayor, Vyachislav Ponomaryov, and despite more than a whiff of intimidation provided by gunmen stationed inside many polling places. Outside Donetsk the appearance of an election tended to break down. In the town of Krasnoarmiyst, voters filed past a table to pick up a ballot and a sausage sandwich, and completed ballots were dropped into cardboard boxes.
As rumors spread about fixed results, election officials were nonchalant about the potential for fraud in such hastily organized conditions. In Slovyansk, anyone with proof of residence elsewhere in the Donetsk region could fill out a brief form and receive a ballot. The scene there, while it lasted, was an outpouring of local pride, and of anger at the interim government in Kiev. Crude secessionist propaganda posters hung near the polling station. One depicted a goat-like figure meant to represent the interim president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov, and asked, “Do you want Satan as your president?”
“We watch who is coming, and see that they’re normal people who wouldn’t vote again elsewhere,” said Vitaly A. Vyadkin, chairman of polling site No. 141200 in the Lenin Palace of Culture in Slovyansk. “Although in principle, it’s possible.” Another referred to rejecting the “European choice for Jews,” touching this country’s dark currents of hatred and anti-Semitism. Still another depicted a shocking photograph of a skinned human body, with a legend saying that “Globalism prepares people for cannibalism.”
The United States and European nations say they have no intention of recognizing the ad hoc vote, no matter the results, calling it illegal and likely only to worsen the lethal violence in Ukraine’s east. Galina Kuznetsov, an election volunteer overseeing this polling station, said in the morning that she was pleased with the way things were going because nobody was drunk. “You don’t see one person here with a bottle of beer,” she said. “Everybody is sober.”
Ballots for the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk were created on copiers. In one city, voting booths consisting of red drapes stapled to wooden frames had been thrown together Saturday, and an election organizer in Donetsk said he was sure the vote would count because there was no rule for a minimum turnout. But shortly after noon, a pro-Ukrainian volunteer militia backed by Ukrainian army troops who guarded nearby checkpoints swept in and broke up the voting in Krasnoarmiyst, though the organizers managed to carry off the cardboard boxes of ballots, presumably to count.
Separatist groups in eastern Ukraine conducting the voting on Sunday said they were as unfazed by the monumental task ahead as they were by the international condemnation of elections that many outsiders said could not possibly be free and fair amid the chaos enveloping the region. A commander of the volunteer militia, known as the Dnepr group and hailing from another region more solidly in Ukrainian government control, said his orders were not specifically to stop the voting, but to secure a nearby building.
Despite their slapdash nature, the elections pose a risk of escalating the smoldering conflict in Ukraine by entrenching the political wings of pro-Russian militant groups, while putting the interim government in Kiev, the capital, in the awkward position of arguing against what organizers describe as a democratic votes. An angry crowd formed, and one woman yelled, “They are preventing the people from expressing themselves!”
In Kiev, Sergiy Pashinskiy, the acting chief of staff for Ukraine’s presidential administration, denounced the vote on Sunday. The scene darkened, with the voting already forgotten and a group of local men taunting the militiamen, who took up positions in City Hall and made a show of cocking their Kalashnikov assault rifles. One man in the group who advanced on them, ignoring warning shots over his head, was shot and killed, and another was wounded.
“The so-called referendum in Donetsk and Lugansk regions is an attempt by the terrorists to cover up their crimes,” Mr. Pashinskiy said. “In fact there is no referendum taking place. This is nothing more than an information campaign by terrorists.” In Dobropole, another town in the Donetsk region, a pro-Ukrainian group staged a parallel referendum for national unity and for their district to separate from Donetsk and join a neighboring province to the west, closer to the central government. They and the separatists set up rival polling places on opposite sides of a dusty, potholed street, with small knots of men guarding each site, and the town seemed primed for violence.
No balloting was taking place in two-thirds of the eastern regions, he said, and those leading the separatist balloting elsewhere would be prosecuted. Despite their slapdash nature, the referendums risked escalating the smoldering conflict in Ukraine by giving the political wings of pro-Russian militant groups the opportunity to claim at least the semblance of a popular mandate, while presenting the authorities in Kiev with the awkward problem of seeming to defy the voters.
“Officials of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions participating in this criminal act will be brought to justice in accordance with the laws of Ukraine,” Mr. Pashinskiy said. Sergiy Pashinskiy, the acting chief of staff for Ukraine’s presidential administration, denounced the voting on Sunday in strong terms.
Roman Lyagin, the chairman of the central election committee of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic, had expressed the opposite view on Saturday. “The results will legitimize us before the world community,” Mr. Lyagin said at a news conference in Donetsk. “The so-called referendum in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions is an attempt by the terrorists to cover up their crimes,” Mr. Pashinkskiy said. “In fact, there is no referendum taking place.” He said the voting was taking place only in about one-third of the eastern regions, and that the organizers of the separatist balloting would be prosecuted.
Mr. Lyagin said he had printed 3.1 million ballots that pose one question: “Do you support the act of self-rule for the People’s Republic of Donetsk?” He said polling here would take place at 1,527 sites, including hospitals and schools, that will be secured by police sympathetic to the cause and volunteers. Pro-Russian activists in the Luhansk region to the east said they had made similar arrangements for a vote. “Officials of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions participating in this criminal act will be brought to justice in accordance with the laws of Ukraine,” Mr. Pashinkskiy said.
But even in Donetsk, the wording had people baffled. Some interpret the question as a vote for more local autonomy, some for independence and still others as a step toward inviting annexation by Russia, following the example set in Crimea. The two provinces are predominantly Russian-speaking rather than Ukrainian-speaking, and in past elections have tended to back pro-Russian politicians. But that does not mean that most people there want to secede from Ukraine. A poll by the Pew Research Center released this month indicated that 70 percent of respondents in eastern Ukraine favored keeping the country united, while 18 percent favored the right for the regions to secede, and the remainder were undecided.
In Kiev, Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, called the secession votes in the east “a step into the abyss” that threatened to escalate the violent clashes over the fate of eastern Ukraine into a civil war. Mr. Turchynov is urging talks with eastern leaders to defuse the conflict. Conditions in the east were raw enough that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has generally been supportive of the separatists and was quick to annex Crimea after that region held a referendum to break away from Ukraine, said on Wednesday that the separatists in the east should delay the referendums. It remains unclear what Mr. Putin’s motives were for suggesting the delay.
In an indication of the uncertainty surrounding the elections, voting started early Saturday at one school in Donetsk for reasons that were unclear. And after armed men threatened to kill a principal in the Luhansk region who did not want voting at her school, the central government said education officials should not take risks to oppose the polling. The central Ukrainian government is convinced that the leaders of the separatist groups who have declared independence in Donetsk and Luhansk are fronts for Russian intelligence, and that their goal is to destabilize Ukraine, where a pro-Russian president was driven from office in February by mass protests.
The two provinces that will vote are predominantly Russian speaking, but that does not guarantee a majority would want to secede from Ukraine. A poll by the Pew Research Center released this month indicated that 70 percent of respondents in eastern Ukraine favored keeping the country united, 18 percent favored the right to secede and the remainder were undecided. After weeks of unrest in the east, pro-Russian groups occupy administrative buildings in about a dozen towns, control some highways, and have full control over one midsize city, Slovyansk. The voting there was orderly on Sunday, with crowds at some polling places in the morning. But the turnout seemed to thin by early afternoon, and with only a few hours of balloting left, the lists of those who had voted suggested that the turnout in the city was relatively light, perhaps 30 percent of residents or less.
Those conducting the plebiscite here in Donetsk said they were leaving plenty of flexibility for future changes of course. Government security forces occupy positions around the city, and there was an outbreak of fighting on the outskirts overnight, beginning with a series of explosions, followed by gunfire over the course of about an hour. It was not clear exactly what had been attacked.
“We win the right for self-determination,” Mr. Lyagin said. “The next step will be another referendum when we ask, ‘Do we want to join Russia? Or, do we want to join Ukraine? Or do we want to become an independent state?’ There are many possibilities.” A State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said the United States would not recognize the results of the referendums, whatever they were. She said they were “illegal under Ukrainian law, and are an attempt to create further division and disorder.” a
At the news conference, Mr. Lyagin again underscored the narrative of the pro-Russian groups here that their movement is grass-roots and that, while embracing the Russian flag as a symbol, it is not beholden to Moscow.
The opinion of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who on Wednesday asked the separatists in eastern Ukraine to delay their referendums, was less important, he said, than the opinions of residents here. “We don’t owe anybody anything,” Mr. Lyagin said.
It remains unclear what Mr. Putin’s motives were for suggesting a delay, but the central Ukrainian government is convinced the leaders of the self-proclaimed republics are fronts for a Russian intelligence operation to destabilize Ukraine. After weeks of unrest in the east, pro-Russian groups occupy administrative buildings in about a dozen towns, control some highways, and have full control over Slovyansk.
“We are completely ready for the referendum,” Slovyansk’s mayor, Mr. Ponomaryov said at a news conference Saturday. “Necessary spaces, voting booths and ballot boxes have been prepared. All organizational questions have already been resolved.”
Shortly after his remarks, however, a work brigade was seen constructing wood-frame voting booths.
Hours after that, at midnight, fighting broke out on the outskirts of the city, beginning with a series of explosions. Gunfire erupted a few minutes later, and for roughly an hour machine-gun fire and occasional explosions echoed. It was not clear exactly what had been attacked but by 1:30 a.m., there had not been any action against the rebel-occupied buildings in the city’s center where the referendum was scheduled to begin at 8 a.m.
A State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said the United States would not recognize the results of the votes. She said the referendums “by armed separatist groups are illegal under Ukrainian law, and are an attempt to create further division and disorder,” adding that if they proceed, “they will violate international law and the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
It remained unclear if those in the east who oppose breaking from Ukraine would even turn up to vote, since many of them also consider the election — as well as their unrecognized new countries — illegitimate. But one who did was a 75-year-old woman in Slovyansk who declined to give her name. “I don’t agree with this torment, there should just be one Ukraine,” she said gesturing toward the gunman on the steps of the school where, she said, she had just voted in opposition to the referendum. “I want one president, not internal conflict. I’ve passed through it all, and now I just want to die in peace.”