Coordination after voting – Newspaper Kommersant No. 179 (7380) dated 09/28/2022
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On Tuesday, referendums on joining Russia ended in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) and in the Russian-controlled parts of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions of Ukraine. The voting ended at 16:00, and by the evening it was announced that from 87% to 98% of voters were in favor of joining the Russian Federation there. Now, according to Russian legislation, international treaties will be signed with all four regions, which the President of the Russian Federation will submit for ratification to the Federal Assembly along with bills on the adoption of new subjects. In 2014, the process of joining Crimea and Sevastopol to Russia took six days, but now, taking into account the five-day referendum, it may take twice as long.
Referendums in the DPR, LPR, as well as in the Russian-controlled military units of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions of Ukraine were held from 23 to 27 September. On the first four days, voting was predominantly by mobile for security reasons, and on the last day, all polling stations were opened. Again, for security reasons, voting on Tuesday ended at 16:00 (the time coincides with Moscow time) in order to have time to deliver the ballots from the polling stations to the higher election commissions before dark. In Russia, where approximately 600 polling stations were organized in 84 regions, votes were counted first at the polling stations, after which the results were sent to the Unified Data Collection Center in Moscow.
The counting of the results of the plebiscites proceeded at different rates. For example, in the DPR, by 22:00 only 31.74% of protocols were counted, which gave 93.95% of positive answers. But in three other regions, 100% of the votes were processed by this time: in the LPR, 98.42% of voters voted for joining the Russian Federation, in the Zaporozhye region – 93.11%, and in the Kherson region – 87.05%.
All four referendums were declared valid by the morning of September 26, when the turnout everywhere exceeded 50%. At the same time, the election commissions explained to journalists that the final turnout indicators would be calculated from the number of people on the lists at the time the voting ended. This is due to the fact that, for example, in polling stations outside the four territories, all people who came to vote with valid documents were included in the lists. Initially, the electoral committee of the Kherson region stated that they proceeded from a total number of voters of 750 thousand people, in the Zaporozhye region, 500 thousand people were included in the initial lists. In the DPR, 1.5 million ballots were printed, and in the LPR, as of the first day of the referendum, 1.3 million voters were included in the lists.
Further steps towards the integration of these territories into the Russian Federation are regulated by the federal constitutional law (FKZ) “On the procedure for the admission to the Russian Federation and the formation of a new subject of the Russian Federation in its composition.”
The first of these should be an appeal by their leadership to the President of Russia with an official request for inclusion in the Russian Federation. For example, the head of the LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, said on Tuesday evening that he had already prepared such an appeal and expected to go to Moscow with him in the near future.
Recall that, according to the mentioned law, “a foreign state or part of it can be accepted as a new subject in the Russian Federation”, but in the second case, the consent of the “parent” country is required, which is impossible in the current situation. Therefore, the launch of the legal procedure should be preceded by Vladimir Putin’s decrees recognizing the independence of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions (the DPR and LPR declared their independence back in 2014, while Russia recognized it on February 21, 2022). By the way, it was the desire to fully comply with the requirements of this law that explained the different formulations of questions in referendums. If the residents of the LPR and DPR were asked only about their desire to become part of Russia, then the voters of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions had to answer, in fact, three questions at once: about secession from Ukraine, the formation of an independent state and joining Russia as a subject.
After receiving applications, the President of the Russian Federation “if necessary” consults with the government and parliament, and then instructs to prepare and sign international treaties with candidates for accession. These agreements should govern the name and status of the new entities, the transitional period for their integration, and other priority issues. Signed, but not entered into force agreements are sent to the Constitutional Court, which must evaluate them for compliance with the Basic Law of the Russian Federation. In the event of a positive conclusion of the Constitutional Court, the president sends the treaties for ratification to the State Duma and at the same time submits to the lower house the FKZ drafts on the admission of new subjects to the Russian Federation. All these documents come into force after they are approved by the Federation Council and signed by the president. New entities, depending on the terms of the agreement, may be granted the status of republics, territories, regions, autonomous regions or autonomous districts.
Recall that the scheme described in this law has already been worked out in practice during the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol in 2014. On March 11, the deputies of both territories voted for a declaration of independence, which stated that if a decision on joining Russia is made as a result of a referendum on March 16, then Crimea will be declared an independent and sovereign state with a republican form of government. The day after the referenda, on March 17, 2014, the authorities of Crimea and Sevastopol turned to the President of Russia with an official request to include them in the Russian Federation. On the same day, Vladimir Putin signed a decree recognizing the independence of Crimea with Sevastopol, which has a special status in its composition, and ordered the preparation of an international treaty on the accession of the republic to the Russian Federation. On March 18, the agreement was signed in the Kremlin in a solemn ceremony (this was preceded by Mr. Putin’s 50-minute speech before the members of the Federal Assembly) and sent to the Constitutional Court for conclusion.
In the morning of March 19, the Constitutional Court confirmed the conformity of the treaty with the Constitution, and a few hours later the president submitted it to the State Duma for ratification along with the FKZ draft on the formation of two new subjects within Russia. On March 20, the Duma ratified the agreement and adopted a law on new subjects of the Russian Federation, on March 21 these documents were approved by the Federation Council, and a couple of hours later they were already signed by Vladimir Putin and entered into force. Thus, the entire procedure for the entry of Crimea and Sevastopol into the Russian Federation – from the referendum to the legal accession – took six days.
This time, the process may be longer, primarily because of the five-day referendum.
The ceremonial meeting on the occasion of the signing of the agreements may take place on September 30 – as the Vedomosti newspaper previously reported, Vladimir Putin’s speech to members of the federal parliament is scheduled for this date. Sources of Kommersant in the State Duma confirm this information and add that the deputies are undergoing PCR testing this week (it is mandatory for such protocol events). However, a Kommersant source in the United Russia faction assures that the deputies are doing PCR “just in case”, and what the format of the meeting of parliamentarians with the president will be is still unknown.
It should be noted that, according to the previously approved plan, this week the State Duma is holding two plenary sessions (September 27 and 28), and the next week (October 3 to 9) the deputies were to hold in the regions. However, on Monday it became known that an extraordinary meeting of the Council of the Duma was scheduled for September 29: as Kommersant’s interlocutor in the lower house explained, this is due to the possible holding of an additional plenary meeting on September 29 or 30. And on Tuesday, the Duma reported that the council would meet on September 28, right after the plenary session.
At the same time, Speaker of the Federation Council (SF) Valentina Matviyenko, answering questions from journalists on September 27, said that the upper chamber would consider the issues of the entry of new subjects into the Russian Federation at the next meeting on October 4: “So far, I do not see the need for unscheduled meetings. I believe that we are already on the 4th, if everything is confirmed, if everything goes well, we are ready to consider. Initially, this meeting of the Federation Council was scheduled for October 5 (as a rule, the upper chamber meets on Wednesdays). But this schedule, as the head of the procedural committee of the Federation Council, Vyacheslav Timchenko, explained to Kommersant, was adjusted in early September in connection with Ms. Matviyenko’s business trip abroad, and “this has nothing to do with referendums.” If on October 4 the Federation Council approves the law on new subjects of the Russian Federation, and the president immediately signs it, then, taking into account the referendum extended over five days, the entire procedure for joining Russia will take 12 days – twice as long as the “Crimean” one.
We also note that before the start of the referendums, the leaders of all four territories expected provocations from the armed forces of Ukraine, and especially on the last day of the plebiscites on September 27.
However, the coordinating council of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation for public control over voting, which conducted its own monitoring of the referendums, reported that there were no large-scale provocations that could influence the course of the plebiscites and distort the will of the voters.
According to Alena Bulgakova, deputy chairman of the council, only isolated episodes have been recorded. For example, during the mobile voting in the DPR, there was an attack on members of the election commission, but all the votes of the voters were taken into account. In the LPR, a mother and child center in Alchevsk was damaged by shelling, and voting at three polling stations in the city was moved to a bomb shelter. Another incident happened in the Zaporizhia region, where the area where the ballots were stored was shelled at night, but this did not cause any damage to the voting results, Ms. Bulgakova said.
Political scientist Vladimir Shemyakin believes that Ukraine and the West, in fact, no longer made sense to try to prevent referendums. “They initially stated that they do not recognize their results, which are predetermined. And then it makes no sense to tear them down. Moreover, an attempt to interfere, on the contrary, would raise their importance, ”explains the expert.
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