Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Adrian Karatnycky writes for Politico Europe on Kyiv’s disenfranchisement of voters in Donetsk and Luhansk regions during recent elections:
Some 2 million Ukrainians from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions who live outside Russia-backed enclaves were denied the right to participate in Sunday’s elections.
Despite Ukraine’s Central Election Commission’s best efforts, local supervisory election bodies in Mariupol (population 450,000) and Krasnoarmiysk (population 68,000) canceled the vote. Not surprisingly, these local commissions appear to have been politically motivated: The ruling coalition parties were ill-prepared for the vote and public opinion polls showed strong support for the Opposition Bloc party.