As Ukraine is beginning to prepare for a belated presidential election, Russia is already preparing to proclaim it rigged, according to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
To do that, Russia is first going to demand that Ukrainians living in Russia and in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories are allowed to vote in Ukraine’s presidential election and a potential referendum on peace deal.
Zelensky told journalists on Dec. 27, as he was en route to U.S. for his upcoming meeting with President Donald Trump, that he got insight into Russian plans from his latest briefing with Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service earlier that day.
Zelensky said that the Russian leadership has made a decision to allow Ukrainians in Russia and Russian-occupied territories to vote in Ukraine’s elections.
By doing so, according to Zelensky, Russia means to prepare the ground for later claiming that those Ukrainians didn’t have proper access to vote, and therefore the election can’t be recognized.“Russia does not care how it delivers its message about the illegitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities,” Zelensky said. “Russia itself is illegitimate, and therefore it will issue corresponding messages about the illegitimacy of the Ukrainian leadership.” Moscow has questioned the legitimacy of Zelensky’s rule as he didn’t hold elections following the official end of his five-year term last year. But Kyiv shot back by saying elections cannot be held under martial law, which has been in place since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Elections have been floated as part of a peace or ceasefire deal that Ukraine has been discussing with the U.S. But voting in the occupied territories and millions of refugees abroad complicates the process.Zelensky told reporters on Dec. 27 that he is “politically ready” for elections and isn’t “holding for his chair” but only when Ukraine has solid security guarantees from the West. Kyiv is already laying the groundwork for a potential election in the future, including updating the voter register.“There must be a safe sky and security everywhere on our territory, at least for the period of elections or for the period of a referendum,” he said, ahead of a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida to discuss a peace proposal. “There must be legal readiness so that elections are then recognized as legitimate,” he added. The Kremlin, which has been headed by Russia’s authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin, has held sham referendums to legitimize its rule over Ukraine’s occupied territories. In 2014, Moscow held an illegal vote in Crimea, while in 2022, residents of occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts were subject to referendums at gunpoint. “It is very important that observers be present everywhere — for the sake of legitimacy,” Zelenksy said.
Read also: En route to America, Zelensky shares his top priority for upcoming meeting with Trump
From The Kyiv Independent - News from Ukraine, Eastern Europe via this RSS feed