While Russia hailed the Nov. 2 elections held by Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed separatists as a legitimate expression of popular will, more evidence has piled up in recent days that the results of the elections had been rigged. Other reported problems with the elections: not being held in accordance with Ukrainian and international law, the absence of independent observers, the removal of all major competitors of the incumbent leaders from the race, the distribution of vegetables at polling stations and the lack of media freedom. On top of that, separatist guards wielding assault rifles at polling stations were seen by some commentators as intimidating. Others criticized the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic for artificially decreasing the number of polling stations to a minimum, causing long lines intended to demonstrate a high turnout on Russian television. The governments of the unrecognized republics were not available for comment.
U.S.-based election specialist Alexander Kireev wrote in his blog on Nov. 3 that, according to official results, Alexander Zakharchenko, then prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Kofman and Yury Sivokonenko received 765,340, 111,024 and 93,280 votes, respectively, in the election of the republic’s leader. If the number of votes for specific candidates is divided by the total number of voters, the results will be 78.93000 percent for Zakharchenko, 11.4500 percent for Kofman and 9.6200 percent for Sivokonenko, he added.
(Meanwhile, Luhansk Oblast voters elected Igor Plotnitsky, the incumbent head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, while his Peace for Luhanshchina got 69.42 percent in the legislature.)
Regarding the Donetsk Oblast election, Kireev said that such round percentages were a highly unlikely probability mathematically, and three of them in a row were virtually impossible. The results prove that the commission first made up certain percentages and calculated an imaginary number of voters based on them, he said.
Full Article: Analysts say separatist election results rigged.