"Inside Putin's Rigged Ukraine Election"

[The Magistrate]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/12/russia-rakes-in-the-votes-in-eastern-ukraine-referendum.html

Shortly before separatist leaders here declared a huge majority had voted in a referendum to break from Ukraine, their press spokeswoman had chortled at the idea that a result would be declared a mere three hours after polling stations closed.

“Are you crazy? How would we have time to count the ballots?” said Claudia.

Precisely, how indeed? But then despite a series of opinion polls over the past few weeks showing only a minority of eastern Ukrainians wanted to follow the example of the Black Sea peninsula and secede, the plebiscite in Donetsk—one of two of Ukraine’s easternmost regions voting Sunday—was always a foregone conclusion.

In the circumstances the separatists were restrained with their referendum result: an 89 percent majority for secession and 10 percent against on a 74.7 percent turnout. A Soviet-style majority but not as unabashed as Crimea’s supposed 97 percent secession triumph in March.




And then without even a pause for breath....


East Ukraine separatists seek union with Russia

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27369980

Separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk say 89% and 96% respectively voted in favour of "self-rule" in the referendums, held a fortnight before Ukraine's presidential elections.

Ukraine's acting President Olexander Turchynov said the turnout for the referendum was much lower than the figure of 75% claimed by the rebels.

"According to the Interior Ministry... about 24% of people eligible to vote took part in the so-called referendum the Luhansk Region and slightly over 32% in the Donetsk Region," he said.



Ukraine separatists appeal to Moscow for absorption into Russia

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/us-ukraine-crisis-union-idUSBREA4B0HW20140512

The Ukrainian separatist region of Donetsk appealed to Moscow on Monday to consider its absorption into the Russian Federation to "restore historic justice".

The statement, the day after a referendum on self-rule that rebels said had mustered some 80 percent support, was certain to infuriate Kiev and anger Western states who believe the rebellion has been engineered by the Kremlin.

Statement by Denis Pushilin, a leading member of the self-declared "Donetsk People's Republic", at a news conference in largely Russian-speaking Donetsk.

He said Belarus also belonged in a broader union of states that once formed the core of the Soviet Union.

"Based on the will of the people and on the restoration of an historic justice, we ask the Russian Federation to consider the absorption of the Donetsk People's Republic into the Russian Federation," he said.

"The people of Donetsk have always been part of the Russian world. For us, the history of Russia is our history."

[reformist2]

1. Both the US and Russia are trying to control Ukraine. If Russia wins this one, fine by me.

[LittleBlue]

3. Same

Though it is fascinating to see people argue that the IMF's austerity plan, imposed by an unelected mob in Kiev, is the right way forward.

[joshcryer]

10. Not me, Russia is regressing.

[The Magistrate]

13. Unfortunately True, Sir

[joeybee12]

2. You can't post this here...the RT will confirm the US is the enemy and Putin is God...

And a certain segment at DU will declare the people of Ukraine have spoken and only fascists don't agree with it.

[dionysus]

4. no kidding.

[joeybee12]

5. And before I even posted that...

Someone here confirmed it!

[Benton D Struckcheon]

6. I did my small piece.

Posted their connections to Dugin, and the alliance they've forged with the neo-Nazi right in the rest of Europe. If some segment of DU still thinks it's just jim-dandy to let Putin give the far right in Europe carte blanche to revisit all of WWI and WWII and go through all of the exact same ethnic and religious strife for a third time over, well, the only thing left that I can do is place them on ignore. After all these years I've spent on this Earth, I'm not going to spend the last part of my life listening to people with zero moral compass or treating them as if they're normal or have any right to call themselves a part of the left.
I'm done with this issue.

[Purveyor]

7. Sign me up. eom

[Cha]

8. Fuck Putin and his ugly anti-Gay crackdown.. his internet Grab.. his journalist crackdown.. and the

idiots who push him down our throats.


Euromaidan PR @EuromaidanPR
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Would u believe this actually press brief for "Donetsk Electoral Commision"? RU transparency in action @varlamov

7:04 AM - 10 May 2014

98 Retweets 21 favorites •Reply
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[William769]

14. I had not seen that.

Well of course I didn't, it wasn't on RT!

[Cha]

16. I appreciate any real news on Ukraine around here, too, William.

[MADem]

17. Looks like a scene from Adult Swim's "Delocated." Only without the attempt at humor...

[Iterate]

9. A reasonable map of the area covered by ths fake referendum.

I can see some minor inaccuracies, but it does give a sense of the limited scope and scale. Yet they claim to speak for the entire oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk.

[pampango]

11. That map is amazing. How politically accurate is it? n/t

[Iterate]

19. Nothing there indicates the depth of support,

other than the obvious geographical concentration around Horlivka. The distance from Donetsk to Luhansk is about 80 miles.

The pie-splits only show an approximation of the number of city facilities that are in control of one side or the other, so using it as a guide for support can be misleading. Even in Sloviansk there was a pro-unity demonstration early on that matched the separatists in size, but it was disrupted and not repeated on that scale.

Mariupol(pop. ~500,000) was interesting in that regard because the city office was taken/occupied early April by about 40 lightly armed protestors and no one seemed to care or take it seriously. It was largely ignored for weeks and nearly withered away without any notable public demonstrations. In fact, none of the public demonstrations in the area have been large. When the Ukrainian military moved into Mariupol last week, the confrontations were mostly at night with armed street-fighters. That's when the PrivatBank branch was burned, which forced the closure of branches throughout the area. Several sources mentioned that only four polling places were open in the city on Sunday.

Using behavioral clues to the depth of support in this triangle isn't giving up many conclusions --unless it could be overlaid with 2012 local-level votes for the hometown favorite Yanukovych and maybe a few other indicators, such as consumption of Russian media.

To the north in Kharkiv(pop. ~1.4M), other than shooting the mayor, there has been almost no violence or display of weapons. Unity protesters have outnumbered separatists 3- or 4-to-1. Still though, small numbers, in the thousands. Some separatist demos have been teabagger in size.

Hang on 'til the 25th...

[Iterate]

20. Ukraine vs Russia: A mafia state's cover-up?

I just crossed paths with this piece, one of the very few which touches on the demographic differences I mentioned before. Also in the other post, I started to mention the blackmarket trade, corruption and illegal coal mining in the area as a factor. This article discusses it better than I ever could.

We spend most of our time discussing ideology, dogma, or political power blocs, but in truth when these power centers collapse it turns out to be all about corruption with ideology and ethnic definitions as a cover. I hope the Koch Bros are listening.

Ukraine vs Russia: A mafia state's cover-up?
The false ethno-linguistic discourse distracts from the real essence of the Ukrainian conflict.
Last updated: 13 May 2014 10:02
Leonid Ragozin

...

Kremlin propaganda is pushing the narrative of "oppressed" Russians rising against "the artificial state" of Ukraine on the lands that "accidentally" became a part of this country as a result of the Soviet collapse in 1991. This image appears to be very far from the truth when you actually travel in Donbass. Society appears extremely polarised over the issue of separation from Ukraine, but it looks much more as a class warfare than an ethnic conflict.

Educated, middle-class people tend to support a united Ukraine, even though practically 100 percent of them are Russian-speakers. Supporters of separatism are largely comprised of pensioners and state employees craving for paternalist social state, like the Soviet Union. They are mixed with members of local criminal gangs and employees of law-enforcement agencies, which in a highly criminalised region like Donbass is largely the same social group.

Both the West and Russia appear to be describing the conflict in Ukraine in the same ethno-national terms as those in former Yugoslavia. Western politicians and media accuse Russia of imperialism and revanchism, reducing the extremely complex Russo-Ukrainian mutual history and densely intertwined cultures to the primitive and rather unhelpful empire-colony model.

...

Apart from being deeply flawed, the ethno-political discourse diverts people's attention from the root of the problem. The essence of the battle under way in Ukraine, as well as in Russia and other former Soviet countries, is best described by arguably the most popular (and definitely the shortest) slogan of the Ukrainian pro-democracy movement. It goes "Bandu get'!", which means "Down with the gang!". By the "gang" people mean the extremely corrupt regime, linked to organised crime and backed by a cruel repressive apparatus that benefits from looting businesses and robbing individuals - a mafia state. Different versions of such authoritarian kleptocracy are now in control of all of the ex-USSR countries, except Baltic states and arguably Georgia.

complete...http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/ukraine-vs-russia-mafia-state--2014512164523249486.html

It's interesting that both Lukashenka in Belarus and Nikolić in Serbia recently ran on very strong anti-corruption platforms.

[The Magistrate]

21. Definitely Something To That, Sir

Last edited Tue May 13, 2014, 01:48 PM - Edit history (2)

A fight over spoils, over which gang of oligarchs and kleptocrats gets the best slice. There is no left v right divide to this, which is why leftists crying 'oppose fascists!' while they align with a fascist on the grounds that the U.S. is a worse fascist somehow, make such a ludicrous spectacle.

But there is a progressive v reactionary divide, and for all its flaws, the Kiev government and its mostly urban and, yes, bourgeois supporters, constitutes the progressive side....

[Iterate]

22. Here's one for you...debunking the “American mercenaries in Ukraine” story

Russia This Week: Propagandists Recycle American Mercenaries Hoax
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-this-week-what-do-polls-measure-in-russia/

0710 GMT: Voice of Russia, the Kremlin’s propaganda outlet on radio and the Internet, has decided to wheel out the “American mercenaries in Ukraine” story once again. We traced the last round of this story here, and pointed out that the numbers had morphed from 1,000 to 300 to 150 mercenaries, and been sourced variously in the Russian ambassador and the Russian Foreign Ministry — but was never found to have any substance whatsoever. There was not a single eye-witness report, citizen’s YouTube, Instagram photo or tweet proving the existence of anything remotely like such persons.

Along the way, the earlier version made crude mistakes, like giving the outdated name of the firm as “Blackwater” and not explaining the actual relationship between Academi and the spin-off, Greystone.

So now, the propagandists are trying to clean the story up — they’ve decided to go with “400? — 150 or 300 probably sounded too meager (although the more they inflate the number, the more we’re going to ask why ordinary townspeople haven’t noticed these Americans). They also decided to give the story a more “credible” source than the Russian Foreign Ministry, which is likely to be biased on this subject — and have made the source be a German newspaper quoting German intelligence — although of course, no such claim has been made by the real German authorities:

...
As VOA correspondent Fatima Tlisova reported, given the demand for pictures, Russian TV has obliged by supplying one still that they touched up a little by removing a tell-tale “Wendy’s” restaurant and some other English-language signs. They claimed the photo showed American mercenaries in Ukraine. In fact, it’s a photo from New Orleans in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina:


I don't have any doubt this will be repeated, and you'll likely see the reincarnation before I do.

I hated to kick the other thread, but did want to give everyone a chance to cure their gullibility.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=803227

[The Magistrate]

23. I Seriously Dislike Sloppy Work, Sir...

If people are going to lie, they ought to do a decent job of it.

[The Magistrate]

12. Interesting, Sir

[William769]

15. Thank you for keeping it real sir/ma'am

[The Magistrate]

18. Thank You, Sir

Though that phrase always reminds me of the Chappelle Show routine....