Local elections are looming in the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (“DPR, LPR”) in October. If validated internationally, such elections could lead to internal Ukrainian constitutional negotiations that would preserve the Russia-Ukraine conflict—unsolved, but in a different form. It would conclusively vindicate Russia’s thesis about this conflict being internal to Ukraine, not a state-on-state conflict. Russia would no longer bear the brunt of responsibility for it.
Ukrainian law, however, provides no basis for elections of any kind to be held in territories beyond the legitimate government’s control. Ukrainian legislation invalidates in advance any elections that might be staged in the …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation
