Russia is set to hold elections in occupied parts of Ukraine, but UK intelligence claims they’ll be neither free nor fair.
The regional and municipal elections will reportedly be held between September 8 and 10 for most occupied regions, although they’ve already started in Zaporizhzhia and Mariupol.
Those living locally will also be heading to the ballot box at the same time as those in Russia vote.
But, as the UK’s ministry of defence (MoD) suggested in its daily update on the social media platform X, the outcome of these elections is not expected to actually reflect what voters want.
The MoD claimed: “Whilst over 1,000 candidates have been identified, there is a lack of qualified, experienced and willing candidates according to some reports.
“There is also an absence of independent candidates that are not members of the Kremlin endorsed parties, indicating that these will not be free or fair elections.”
Similarly, an opinion piece in POLITICO from Harald Hartvig Jepsen and Peter Erben slammed these elections for “running roughshod over the very principle of democracy” in August.
The authors said the elections are an attempt from Putin to “paint Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territories as somehow legitimate”, and draw a comparison to Kyiv, as it has suspended its own democratic elections during the war.
Russia is also planning to hold presidential elections next year.
But, it’s worth remembering the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s most prominent political opponent, Alexei Navalny, was detained in 2021 and later imprisoned. Only last month, he was sentenced to 19 extra years in prison due to supposed extremism charges.
Referring to this month’s elections, the MoD also alleged: “The Ukrainian Centre of National Resistance claims that the occupation administrations have significantly overstated the number of voters on the electoral register.
“Kremlin polls indicate United Russia, the dominant political party in the Russian Federation, is predicted to gain 80% of the vote in the four occupied regions.
“The United Russia party will likely command the majority of seats in an attempt to secure the Kremlin’s hold and influence over the occupied regions.”
The elections also come a year after Putin broke international law by holding a false referendum asking residents in occupied Ukraine if they wanted to become part of his country.
As political pundits had predicted, Russia later revealed that residents of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson were soon declared Russian “citizens forever” after supposedly voting to join Moscow – despite there still being substantial opposition to Russian rule in all of the regions.