Ukraine Says Rebel Votes Undercut Truce as Tension Mount
Electoral workers count ballots for the leadership vote in the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic at a polling station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Nov. 2, 2014.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said rebel-held elections in the countrys east violate a two-month-old cease-fire, as he threatened to scrap the law granting greater autonomy to the separatist regions.
Calling the Nov. 2 ballots a farce that jeopardizes the entire peace process, Poroshenko said Ukraine will never recognize their results, according to a statement issued yesterday. Poroshenko will convene a meeting of Ukraines National Security and Defense Council at 5 p.m. today to consider revoking the special status law that was part of the truce accord struck Sept. 5 in the Belarus capital, Minsk.
As the U.S. and its European allies rejected the vote in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, the Russian Foreign Ministry said yesterday it respected the results, which provided a mandate to the elected representatives to solve practical tasks and restore normal life in the regions. Officials from Germany warned the government in Moscow of stronger economic sanctions.
The contested vote exposed a deepening rift over a conflict that the United Nations estimates has cost more than 4,000 lives. After Russia agreed to a peace plan in September, the parliament in Kiev approved laws that extend temporary autonomy to parts of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, allowing them to hold elections to appoint self-ruling bodies. Ukraine scheduled the official poll for Dec. 7, while rebels loyal to Russia staged their own vote.
The pseudo-elections undermined the law and aggravated the situation in the Donbas, Poroshenko said. We are ready to provide broad powers laid down in the law only to the legally elected local government, not to the bandits who coronate themselves.
If all sides abide by the Minsk agreement, Ukraine is willing to approve another law to decentralize power, he said.
The force of the presidents remarks underscores concerns in Kiev that the rebel regions are becoming increasingly divorced from Ukraine as de-facto statelets. Russias sixth aid mission arrived in Donetsk and Luhansk today after two 10-truck convoys crossed the border into Ukraine with more than 50 tons of fuel and medicines each, RIA Novosti news service reported, citing the Russian Emergencies Ministry.
Poroshenkos response is logical because the rebel elections completely wrecked the Minsk agreement, Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst at the Penta research institute in Kiev, said by phone. There is a great risk of further conflict, he said.
Russian-backed attacks will be intensified to force Europe and Ukraine into direct talks with separatist leaders now, Fesenko said. That is why those elections were needed. And, through those talks, to legitimize the two separatist republics.
View post:
Ukraine Says Rebel Votes Undercut Truce as Tension Mount