«Russian presidential elections» in Ukraine’s occupied territories: what is known?

The so-called presidential elections in the Russian Federation are to be held on March 17, but this year for the first time they introduced three-day voting: from March 15 to 17. In the occupied territories of Ukraine they started to hold them ahead of schedule.

Thus, the collaborator Volodymyr Saldo reported that in Kherson region they hold illegal two-stage early elections in two stages: the first seven municipalities will vote from February 27 to 29, the second seven – from March 1 to 3.

It is known that the CEC even allowed voting not only with a Russian passport, but also with Ukrainian identity documents (passport, ID-card of a Ukrainian citizen).

In the occupied Crimea, the Russians began to go around people’s apartments and «strongly» invite them to the rf presidential election. As reported by «Krym.Realii», this was done by four women wearing capes with the logo of the current presidential campaign in Russia. They did not name the organization they represented, only handed out leaflets with information about the elections.

The Chairman of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, member of  Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Eskender Bariiev earlier stated that in the temporarily occupied cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions, Russians started intimidating people, primarily those who depend on some social payments, in advance of the «elections».

According to him, Russians first of all purposefully influence those people who work in municipal or state institutions, meaning those who work in kindergartens, schools and other state institutions. The occupants give the task to come to the «polling station» and make sure to take a photo and send it as a report. In this way they try to increase the number of people participating in the «elections» to show that people «go and support».Crimean Tatar Resource Center points out the unlawful nature of such actions of Russia and calls on all residents of the occupied territories to refuse to participate in this meeting.

The entire civilized world will not recognize the results of this «vote». For example, the foreign policy representative of the European Commission, Peter Stano, has already stated that he considers the holding of the so-called presidential election by Russia in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine to be a violation of international law and will never recognize its results.