While Ukraine officially considers Crimea “temporarily occupied,” the peninsula will have no direct representation from any of its 12 electoral districts – for the first time in Ukraine’s independent history – in the next Verkhovna Rada.
The new situation raises questions about how the interests of Crimea’s two million people will be lobbied for in Kyiv and how well politicians from the capital will be able to stay in touch with the interests and needs of Crimeans.
A small number of lawmakers from Crimea are expected to be elected to Ukraine’s parliament through the proportional, party-list ballot. Roughly 10 people with connections to Crimea running on the lists of parties expected to enter Ukrainian parliament according to political expert Taras Berezovets. Six of those candidates are running on President Petro Poroshenko’s party list.
But voters on the peninsula who would like to cast their ballots in the snap election do not have it easy.
They have to travel to mainland Ukraine twice to be able to do it. First, they had to register at a mainland polling station before the Oct. 20 deadline, according to Kostyantyn Khivrenko, a spokesman for the Central Election Commission. Then on Election Day they again have to go to the mainland where they can only tick one box on their ballot – for the party list.
These obstacles are why few Crimean voters are expected to vote. The CEC reported that only 2,864 people living in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and 774 in Sevastopol had registered to change their place of voting. That’s even a decrease from the more than 6,000 people who registered for the May 25 presidential election.
Aside from the logistical hurdles, experts say voters fear reprisals from Russian authorities for participating in Ukrainian elections, an act that could be considered a protest against Russian rule.
“On the day of the Ukrainian presidential election hundreds of people, especially Crimean Tatars, got on buses and voted in Kherson Oblast. Almost every one of them had a case opened by the FSB (Russia’s Federal Security Service). They went to their homes or called them in for questioning,” said Crimean Tatar leader Refat Chubarov.
Chubarov himself is running as number 71 on the Petro Poroshenko Bloc list. He is under a five-year travel ban prohibiting him from entering his homeland imposed by Crimea’s Kremlin-backed leadership.
Poroshenko’s bloc includes the most robust representation of Crimeans in the election, with the former head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Mustafa Dzhemilev, in the prominent fifth position on the list.
In addition, Poroshenko’s list includes individuals active in Crimean politics such as former Crimean Prime Minister Serhiy Kunitsyn and former leader of the Crimean branch of Vitali Klitschko’s UDAR party, Aleksandr Mochkov. And Sevastopol and Crimea natives Dmytro Bilotserkovets and Iryna Friz.
The most prominent Crimean politician in the Ukrainian parliamentary election is Dzhemilev who, when trying to enter Crimea in March, was given a document stating he was banned from entering Russia for five years.
There are some 300,000 Crimean Tatars on the peninsula, and most of them oppose the Russian annexation. Community leaders say this Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group has been subject to a campaign of harassment and intimidation since March.
Human Rights Watch said at least seven Crimean Tatars have been forcibly disappeared or gone missing in Crimea since May 2014, including two on September 27. The body of one of them was found hanged earlier this month.
Chubarov says it’s especially important under these circumstances to make sure that the central government is engaged in the problems of the Crimean Tatars. “I worry for my people. We are inseparable from the future of Ukraine and as such the most important topic is ending the occupation of Crimea by Russian forces,” Chubarov said.
Andriy Senchenko a native of Simferopol and number 32 on the Batkivshchyna party list saying he is in daily contact with his friends and family in Crimea. “There is constant psychological pressure on those who identify as citizens of Ukraine,” he said.
It is unclear how this diverse group of politicians can represent Crimea’s interests.
They have not organized into a group to collectively lobby for Crimea’s interests and have instead mainly focused on national Ukrainian politics according to Berezovets. Crimea has also traditionally been a bastion of pro-Russian parties such as the Party of the Regions and the Communist Party of Ukraine rather than the pro-Western parties expected to dominate the Rada.
Despite its complexity, Crimea at least has a legal framework for its status in Ukraine. It’s regulated by a special law that recognizes this territory as temporarily occupied by Russia.
Meanwhile, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts remain in the legal gray zone. They are not recognized as occupied territories, but elections will not take place in areas held by Russia-supported separatists.
In Donetsk, officials say only 13 out of 21 election districts will be operational while 5 out of 11 districts will be voting in Luhansk.
