Tensions mount as Ukraine prepares to elect new president

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/24/tensions-mount-ukraine-prepares-elect-new-president

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Three months after Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev amid popular unrest and violence in the Ukrainian capital, the country will go to the polls to elect a new president on Sunday.

Since then, Russia has annexed the Crimean peninsula and the east of the country has been convulsed by civil conflict, possibly spurred by Russian intelligence and logistical support, but now taking on a life of its own.

Voting in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where separatists have proclaimed breakaway independent republics after a pair of hastily organised referendums earlier this month, is likely to be patchy at best, with separatists vowing to disrupt the vote.

In the more entrenched rebel strongholds, such as the town of Slavyansk, it seems unlikely there will be any voting at all, while even in Donetsk itself election officials could not say on Saturday afternoon how many polling stations would open and where they would be.

There were rumours that some may open at the airport, or inside the football stadium, to provide more security than would be available at normal polling station venues, such as schools.

Those people who have cooperated with elections have received abusive phonecalls, physical threats and in some cases have even been kidnapped. Human Rights Watch documented cases in both Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including a female headteacher who was briefly abducted from her school at gunpoint and subjected to a "people's tribunal", before being released.

"In Donetsk and Luhansk districts armed insurgents are out of control, attacking people at will, abducting and beating political activists and members of district electoral commissions and the police clearly have no control over them," said Yulia Gorbunova of Human Rights Watch, who is in the region. "The insurgents are sending a very clear message: anyone who doesn't support them should keep quiet."

Many of the towns and villages of the regions appear relatively peaceful, but over the past weeks faultlines have been drawn and the tension is not far below the surface.

In the village of Oktyabr, a former collective farm about an hour's drive from Donetsk, the elections will take place and the 512 eligible residents will be able to vote. The all-female members of the electoral committee said that everything was peaceful and they expected no trouble on election day, as they went about installing the urns and pasting biographies of the 21 electoral candidates to the wall in the village's small social club earlier this week.

But when they were questioned separately, the cracks began to appear. Two of the women said that actually they supported the separatist movement, while the 62-year-old head of the village electoral committee said it had been harder than ever before to get people to work on the committee.

"There are some streets in the village I can't even cycle down any more, people have shouted at me and told me to get my face off the streets as I support Kiev," said Lyubov Vasilieva. "Lots of people have said they won't help out with the vote, and I am most worried about taking the electoral protocols to the district office at the end of the day. Anything could happen and I am scared, really scared," she said, beginning to cry.

In Donetsk, 27-year-old Pavel Gusin said that he had no time for the separatist movement but little enthusiasm for Kiev or the elections either.

"Who are we supposed to vote for? Poroshenko is an oligarch like the rest, is that really what they stood on Maidan and smashed up Kiev for, so that they could elect another oligarch?"

Petro Poroshenko, the "chocolate king" who made his wealth through his confectionary empire, is well ahead in the polls. But it is unclear that he will be able to garner the 50% of votes he needs to win in the first round. If he does not, there will be another three weeks of political uncertainty before a run-off. There are also doubts as to whether the super-rich tycoon is the right person to steer the country to a new future without oligarchic and political corruption, and the biggest question of all is whether Kiev be able to bring the ever more chaotic situation in the east under control.

Through European intermediaries, there have been informal negotiations between the pro-Kiev authorities in Donetsk and figures within the Russian government and there is confidence that Russia will not attempt a direct intervention.

But the worry now is that the separatist movement has spiralled out of control. There have been several bloody incidents this week involving pro-Kiev paramilitary groups and armed separatists, which have left dozens dead. There is also a growing sense that differences between different separatist militias could lead to confrontation. The Ukrainian army's "anti-terrorist operation", which also involves volunteer brigades and paramilitaries, has so far served more to radicalise the local population than to subdue it.

"We are at a bifurcation point," says a source within the pro-Kiev administration. "The next week will be decisive in terms of what happens here. Will there be a way to bring it under control, or are they going to have one last push and try to kill us all?"