Elections in Russia and Ukraine

Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X

NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.

When do the Ukrainians go to the polls, by the way? I assume this bastion of liberal democracy would have regular free and fair elections. /sarc https://t.co/FIJO5B428A

— Armchair Warlord (@ArmchairW) March 15, 2024

Media comments on the Russian Presidential elections have really amused me. Today I watched a “Russian expert” on UK Times Radio assure me that the Russian presidential elections are a farce. Putin would get 98% of the vote as he always does*. Then, strangely, he went on to discuss why actions to influence the election were important. Actions ranged from Ukrainian military units crossing the border to blow up anything they could find to media criticism and disinformation in the Western mainstream media. Actions somehow aimed at destabilising Putin’s leadership and lowering his vote.

I can’t help asking why they think they could influence the result they claim is rigged. Or that Putin himself is using electoral tricks to attract more voters to his side when he doesn’t need to. It just doesn’t add up.

But what about the Ukrainian elections?

An interesting omission in all this Western coverage of the Russian presidential elections is the absolute silence on elections in Ukraine. I should say the lack of elections in Ukraine.

The Russian Presidential elections occur this weekend (March 15 -17). We know this is happening. But Presidential elections according to the constitution were scheduled to be held in Ukraine on 31 March 2024. They have been cancelled and our media is not complaining. It is not accusing Ukraine of being undemocratic.

Similarly, regular parliamentary elections in Ukraine should have taken place on 29 October 2023. They didn’t – and again our mainstream media has ignored that fact. 

But there is martial law in Ukraine

I know it is easy to justify Ukraine’s lack of democracy on security grounds – they are at war. Yet, The regions formerly part of Ukraine captured by Russia, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia are holding presidential elections at the moment. And last December these regions participated in the Russian parliamentary elections.

The security situation is worse in those annexed regions than in Western Ukraine. After all, the Russina-Ukriane war is taking place in the Donbass. The local authorities took measures to protect election staff and voting stations. So Ukrainian President Zelensky’s use of martial law to postpone elections was obviously an excuse. If the Russians could hold elections in these regions why couldn’t the Ukrainians hold elections in the regions they control?

Yet our media and political leaders say that Ukraine is part of the “free world,’ and that they are fighting for our values. And Zelensky stressed this in his thanks to our government’s donation of military aid to his regime. That we had the same values.

Well, those may be the values of our Minister of Foreign Affairs but they are not my values. Elections are important.

---

*These so-called “Russian experts” show their lack of expertise with such assertions. Wikipedia lists Putin’s election results since 2000 as 53.4% in 200, 71.9 % in 2004, 63.6% in 2012 and 76.7% in 2018.