In Eastern Ukraine, a referendum…but not as we know it

Well I have seen some elections and votes come and go around the globe but today in Eastern Ukraine! I am not sure if the adjectives have yet been invented.

The entire world is ranged against it. It has achieved the hitherto impossible feat of uniting Kiev and Moscow in agreement. Both saying: drop the idea, sit down  and talk a wee bit about where we can all go from here.

Well it won’t play with the hard men and women out East, encamped across two provinces in various buildings they have seized from the “fascist junta” they so hate in Kiev.

So it’s a poll, Jim, but not as we know it.

Some ballot boxes are transparent and bear the flag of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk.

No properly organised voter registration. Hurriedly assembled voting stations in schools. The election commissioner for the self- appointed People’s Republic of Donetsk says: “We have complete understanding with the authorities who are not interfering with the plebiscite. Schools will accommodate voting stations in all towns of Ukraine’s Donetsk region.”

Too damned right the police are not interfering. In Mariupol they have vanished from the face of the earth altogether, leaving the city to be run at street level by angry young people with sticks and barricades.

Would you want to get involved and start laying down Ukrainian law which (according to Kiev) makes the entire thing illegal?

So polls will close at 11pm Moscow time. Organisers clearly view Kiev time as somehow distasteful.

Organisers cheerfully admit all the 53 local election commissions in Donetsk are run by separatists and predict a 75 per cent turnout.

But turning out is just the issue, isn’t it? If you support the union with Ukraine you therefore accept the whole thing is an illegal farce and thus don’t vote. If you do vote no to independence then will your vote even be counted?

Most ballot papers visible in the see-through boxes are marked “yes” for independence from Ukraine.

The Donetsk People’s Republic says whatever the turnout the result will be valid. The extreme logic of that is one person can vote Donetsk  into independence. Clearly, the chaotic reality will be rather different.

Such polls as have been undertaken – and pinches of salt all round here under current polling conditions – suggest that only a little over 40 per cent may want independence.

Could that be why Mr Putin has got cold feet? That Moscow might not get the result it wants? Possibly, but in the menacing run-up to this poll it is hard to see anything but an overwhelming “yes” from whatever numbers get to the polls.

Other polling stations offer facilities for secret voting.

Equally, it may be that a huge majority simply do want rid of Kiev. Frankly, nobody knows and those who claim to know should be offered sedatives.

Ukraine’s president has pretty slim claims to any kind of democratic mandate having arrived via a violent coup – but that large irony doesn’t stop him weighing in against the referendum, saying a “yes” vote will be “a step into the abyss”.

“Those who stand for self-rule do not understand that it would mean complete destruction of the economy, social programmes and life in general…” added President Oleksander Turchinov, in case anyone is not getting his point.

Pro-independence voters out East will simply take that as the rhetoric of the “fascists” they love to hate, in the Kiev they’d love to leave.

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