On September 18, Russia held national elections to the Duma, the lower house of its Parliament. Among the places where the voting took place was Ukraine’s Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in the spring of 2014. To be sure, there are Russian citizens in Ukraine (80,000, according to Russian election officials), and they, of course, should have the right to cast their votes at designated polling places such as the Russian Embassy and Russian Consulates. But that is entirely different than invading someone else’s territory, occupying it, declaring it a part of your country and conducting elections there.
On September 16, the presidents of Ukraine and Russia made statements that demonstrate clearly their opposing positions regarding Crimea. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, speaking at the Yalta European Strategy conference (which was held in Kyiv instead of occupied Crimea), accused Russia of transforming Crimea into a “concentration camp” where it has pursued a “repressive policy” against Ukrainian citizens, including Crimean Tatars. In Bishkek, at a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that “Russia did not annex anything,” but rather “reunified” Crimea with Russia.
Two days before the voting for the Duma, the United States said it does not recognize the legitimacy, and will not recognize the outcome, of the elections to take place in Crimea. “Our position on Crimea is clear: the peninsula remains an integral part of Ukraine. Crimea-related sanctions against Russia will remain until Russia returns control of Crimea to Ukraine,” U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said. Similarly, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it would not be monitoring the elections that Russian authorities intend to illegally hold in Crimea.
On September 20, the Verkhovna Rada, citing the Constitution of Ukraine, international law, the United Nations resolution on the territorial integrity of Ukraine (March 27, 2014), the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and other international legal acts, adopted a resolution which underscored that the election had been conducted illegally “on temporarily occupied territories of the Russia-annexed Crimea and the city of Sevastopol” and pointed out that “on the occupied territory, Russia elected 225 MPs in its federal district and four MPs in single-mandate constituencies, which makes 229 parliamentary members [out of 450 total members of the Duma], which in turn is the majority of the constitutional composition of the State Duma.” This means, the Rada argued convincingly, “that all these MPs are elected in an illegitimate way and that results of the election are null and void.” Therefore, the Rada said, it does not recognize “the composition, authorities, acts and decisions of the State Duma of the VII convocation.” Furthermore, Ukraine’s Parliament called on the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly, parliaments of foreign states, parliamentary assemblies and international organizations not to recognize the legitimacy of the election or the State Duma of the VII convocation. (And we won’t even bother to get into what RFE/RL reported as “massive fraud in favor of the ruling United Russia party comparable to what independent analysts found in 2007 and 2011.”)
Hanna Hopko, chair of the Verkhovna Rada’s Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on the Atlantic Council website: “Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Romania, Sweden and the United States have already announced that they won’t recognize the results of the illegal polls in Crimea.” She called on others to join in this non-recognition, and emphasized that recognizing the elections “will legalize the ongoing occupation of Crimea” and that acquiescence of the international community “undermines the rule of law.”
Brian Whitmore, writing in RFE/RL’s “The Daily Vertical,” reported that the Prague-based European Values think tank has launched a petition “calling on all democratic parliaments to withhold recognition from the Russian State Duma, suspend all interparliamentary cooperation with it, and place Crimean electoral officials, as well as lawmakers who won seats there, under international sanctions.” Mr. Whitmore commented: “Russia crossed an important line on Sunday. They held elections on somebody else’s territory. They held elections on the first forcefully annexed territory in Europe since World War II. And by holding elections there, they hoped to legitimize this in the eyes of the world. They hoped, once and for all, to establish a fait accompli. And we’ll soon see whether this ploy was successful or whether Russia elected an unrecognizable Duma.”
In short, the pseudo-elections have yield a pseudo-Duma. And the world needs to comprehend that.