KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — With the largest number of voters of all Ukrainian regions — more than 3 million people — Donetsk Oblast used to play a big role in national elections.
But since the start of the occupation of a swathe of the oblast by Russia in 2014, the country’s political forces have shown little interest in this area. And while most candidates promise to stop Russia’s war against Ukraine if they are elected, voters in the war zone are skeptical.
Since the beginning of the year, only former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has had a public rally in Donetsk Oblast. She did it in Sloviansk on March 18.
Other candidates have been there, but for closed events — either with local officials and soldiers, like President Petro Poroshenko, or with their supporters or the workers of local enterprises, as did former Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko, the leader of the Opposition Bloc Oleksandr Vilkul, and the nationalist candidate Ruslan Koshulynskyi.
“Some candidates are simply afraid to come here. Others don’t see a point of coming because all these stories about bringing peace don’t work here anymore,” said Anastasiya Prokopenko, an activist of Tochka Dostupu civic group and a local coordinator of the Opora election watchdog.
With part of this war-torn oblast, including its provincial capital Donetsk, remaining under Russian occupation, the Central Election Commission estimates that less than a half of the local electorate, some 1.4 million people, will come to the polls. The rest either can’t do so, as they live in the part of the oblast under the Russian control, or they fled from war to other regions. Still others simply don’t want to vote.
And although Donetsk Oblast has the largest number of internally displaced people in Ukraine, only a very small number of them have registered to vote. Some believe the registration procedures were made deliberately difficult to prevent IDPs from voting, as they are seen as more likely to be in favor of a change in political leadership.
Prokopenko said that as of early March, internally displaced persons accounted for just 2 percent of all those who have changed their voting address so as to take part in the first round of the election on March 31.
Polls
At the presidential election in 2010, Donetsk Oblast voted solidly for a native of the region, Viktor Yanukovych, who was later ousted as president by the EuroMaidan Revolution and fled to Russia in February 2014.
In 2014, it was impossible to hold presidential elections in a large part of the oblast, which was at that time controlled by Russian-led forces. Those who managed to vote mainly supported Poroshenko, who promised to swiftly end the war.
The polls now show locals are divided between the openly pro-Russian candidate Boyko and the political satirist Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political newcomer and surprise frontrunner in the campaign.
Both Boyko and Zelenskiy have 15 percent support in the Donbas region, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, according to a joint poll conducted by the Rating sociological group together with the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and the Razumkov Center on March 5–14.
The third is Oleksandr Vilkul who has 7 percent support, likely thanks to his links to Ukraine’s richest man, the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, whose business empire is predominantly located in Donetsk Oblast. Tymoshenko has 6 percent, followed by Poroshenko with 5 percent.
The leader of Radical Party Oleh Lyashko, who has campaigned a lot at Akhmetov’s plants, has 4 percent support. Former Defense Minister Anatoliy Grytsenko and the former head of the SBU state security service, Ihor Smeshko, are both on 3 percent.
Twenty percent of Donbas residents remain undecided, and 12 percent told the pollsters they are not planning to vote at all.
A worker of a polling station irons the drapes to the voting booths on March 27, 2019, preparing to presidential elections in the city of Kramatorsk. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Hard choice
In Kramatorsk, an industrial city of 157,000 located 620 kilometers southeast of Kyiv — now the capital of the government-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast — campaign tents of arch-rivals Poroshenko and Tymoshenko have been set up about two meters from each other near a local trade center.
There is no antagonism between the Poroshenko and Tymoshenko campaign workers, however.
“We have friendly relations here,” said an elderly woman campaign worker as she handed out Tymoshenko campaign flyers emblazoned with the candidate’s promise to cut utility tariffs.
Poroshenko’s campaign worker, a woman in her 30s, who was handing out leaflets featuring famous Ukrainians endorsing Poroshenko, said she was most afraid that Zelenskiy might win the election.
Sitting on a bench in a few meters from both tents, Valentyna, 68, a university professor, said she was yet to decide whom she would support on March 31.
“The only thing I know for sure is that it won’t be Poroshenko. We have seen his deeds,” she said, refusing to give her last name because of fear of retribution at her state-sector workplace.
In the past, she voted for Tymoshenko, but had become disillusioned with her. She said stopping the war, along with tackling corruption and ensuring economic growth, should be priorities for the new president. However, she had doubts that the inexperienced Zelenskiy could achieve that.
Bogdan Novak, 29, a local journalist who fled from his native Donetsk in 2014 because of the war, said many locals support the pro-Russian Boyko, hoping he will bring peace and better relations with Russia. Many also like Zelenskiy for his jokes about those in power. “People here traditionally like mocking the authorities in Kyiv,” he said.
Bogdan Novak, a journalist, who had to leave his native Donetsk in 2014 fleeing from war, speaks in a cafe in Kramatorsk on March 27. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
But Novak himself supports Poroshenko “as the lesser evil,” saying many politically active residents in Kramatorsk would do the same. Novak said Kramatorsk has developed significantly over the last few years, and he believes this was partly thanks to Poroshenko.
Bitter memories
On March 27, polling station workers in Kramatorsk were setting up ballot boxes and hanging drapes around voting booths. Many recalled the bitter elections of 2014, when Kramatorsk was controlled by Russian-led forces.
Mykola Podushko, the head of a polling station in the local community center, burst into tears when he recalled how armed men broke into a district election commission in May 2014, which was located in a kindergarten. They hit the election commission chairman’s head with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, and then kidnapped him.
The next day, Podushko risked a visit to his polling station, but saw the men in military uniform there. “I had to escape from them by bicycle. They were following me for some time by a car, but I managed to escape from them through some house yards,” he said.
The district election commission of Kramatorsk is now located in City Hall, where in 2014 the Russian-led forces had their headquarters. People come there one after another to complain about problems at the polling stations.
“If you don’t work there, there could be fraud,” a district commission member warned a woman who wanted to quit as the secretary of one polling station. “The observers don’t decide anything. Only the commission staff can register violations,” he added.
But she wasn’t persuaded.
Violations
Prokopenko, an observer, said she had filed 15 complaints with the police about violations during this campaign. They included the fact that Tymoshenko’s campaign workers had given sweets to children living near the frontline — they had been specially bused to Sloviansk on a day of Tymoshenko’s rally there.
Anastasiya Prokopenko, activist of Tochka Dostupu civic group and local coordinator of Opora election watchdog speaks in her office in Kramatorsk on March 27. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
“Her team later explained that some businessmen had paid for the sweets,” Prokopenko said.
In Lyman, a town to the north of Kramatorsk, observers saw a Poroshenko banner hanging in the window of the local state administration office. In Kostiantynivka, the newspapers of Poroshenko’s party were found in City Hall. The observers also witnessed Poroshenko campaign workers collecting personal data from voters, asking people to sign a consent form.
Nevertheless, Prokopenko doesn’t think there will be any serious problems with the vote on March 31.
Polling stations have been set up all over the oblast — even in the towns of Zaitseve and Ocheretyne, which have been split in two by the frontline.
Sixty-five special polling stations have also been set up on the frontline so soldiers serving there can vote too.
“Some of these polling stations will be located somewhere in the fields, and can be visited only with special permission from the army,” Prokopenko said. She said Opora observers would be present at three of them.
