*To read Part One, please click here.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande have prevailed on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to accommodate pseudo-elections in the Russian-controlled territory into a special Ukrainian law. Poroshenko himself, and the Ukrainian body politic at large, had even recently characterized the elections planned in the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR) as “fake elections.” Nevertheless, the pressure on Poroshenko seemed irresistible at the “Normandy” forum’s October 2 summit in Paris (see Part One in EDM, October 9).
“Fake elections” in that territory would not only lack real choices. …read more
Source: The Jamestown Foundation