Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) defended on Tuesday that residents of the four Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia in 2022 will be able to vote in the March 2024 presidential election, even if they do not have a Russian passport.
“In my opinion this is the only right decision,” CEC President Ella Pamfilova told the TASS news agency in response to a question about the possibility of voting in the upcoming elections with a Ukrainian passport.
After invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia declared the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporijia in September, despite not having full control of the four Ukrainian regions. Russia had already annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.
Ukraine and most of the international community do not recognize Russian sovereignty in the five Ukrainian regions annexed by Moscow.
Pamfilova argued that people who “reside permanently in the country, but cannot get a Russian passport for whatever reason or something happened to them” should have the right to vote with another document.
“This is a completely reasonable and correct decision for this specific period, until the situation stabilizes,” he stressed, according to the Spanish agency EFE.
The CEC chairman recalled that during the flooding of the Nova Kakhovka dam last summer, many local residents lost all documents, “including Russian passports.”
Pamfilova said the final decision on the documents needed to vote will be made by local authorities.
Previously, the electoral authorities adopted a resolution giving the electoral commissions of the annexed regions the right to draw up the list of documents required to vote if voters do not have a Russian passport.
Political scientists predict that current President Vladimir Putin will receive “a support level of more than 70%” in the March 17, 2024 elections, while some expect him to even surpass 76.7% in 2018.
The Russian opposition believes that the elections will be a referendum on the war in Ukraine and denounces that the electronic voting that will take place in some regions could encourage fraud.
According to the CEC, there are more than thirty candidates for the Russian presidency so far.
Source: DN
