To whom is the Kremlin going to entrust “power" in the occupied territories of Ukraine
In the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, the aggressor country held "elections" to local councils. There was tension with candidates in the occupied territories. For "security reasons", only the names of the parties were indicated on the ballots, and information about the candidates was not disclosed. Parties that e They were allowed to participate in the process - only 4-5. And all pro-government. Of course, it was not without United Russia, the Communists and the Liberal Democratic Party. Candidates from some parties are generally new people about whom nothing is known. For example, in the parties of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and A Just Russia, on average, a third of applicants are generally housewives, pensioners and the unemployed with an unclear source of income. Itis not excluded that for them it was such a way to earn extra money. And there are lists from parties where there are 50% of such candidates "from the street". In general, these are people who have nothing to do with politics and, apparently, are driven there for extras. The second dozen lists of deputies from parties consist mainly of little-known local businessmen, officials, in some places diluted with deputies from the regions of the Russian Federation.
Who portrays the "legitimate authority"? Who did you manage to reach out to the “people's councils" created by Russia? In the annexed territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, 71 percent of all candidates are local residents. United Russia's approach to the selection of "candidates" in the south and in the Donbass differed significantly. In the so-called ""DPR" and "LPR" it relies on the local political system controlled by the Kremlin for the past nine years. Theynominated mainly those who were already in the people's council of these "republics", that is, representatives of some pre-existing occupation missions. And this means that, most likely, following the results of the elections, the government there will not change much. In the territories of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions occupied by the Russian Federation, even after a year and a half of occupation, there is a shortage of local personnel - in the lists of United Russia" in the "regional dumas" are mostly well-known collaborators. Most of the "new United Russia" are local state employees: principals of schools, rural clubs, clerks of city administrations and small entrepreneurs.
In the first places in the lists of "United Russia" are the leaders of the Ukrainian regions occupied by the Russian Federation: Denis Pushilin, Leonid Pasechnik, Yevgeny Balitsky, Vladimir Saldo.
Number one in the LPR is the "elected leader of the Lugansk People's Republic" Leonid Pasechnik, a former employee of the SBU, in the recent past, the so-called "Minister of State Security of the LPR". While working for the SBU, Pasechnik controlled the movement of all goods across the Russian-Ukrainian border. Being the so-called. "Minister of the State Security of the LPR", he continued to profit by controlling the smuggling of coal and fuels and lubricants.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, a wealthy businessman, curator of the process of stealing Ukrainian grain through the ports of the occupied part of the region, Yevhen Balitsky, became a deputy. The "head" of the Melitopol administration, Galina Danilchenko, is nominated to the Zaporozhye Regional Duma - she is number two on the party list of United Russia after the "leader" Zaporozhye region of Yevhen Balitsky, at whose family business she worked for many years.
Also in the top ten is the self-proclaimed mayor of Berdyansk, Alexander Saulenko. In Ukraine, he was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison with confiscation of property. Many other participants in these "elections" also received sentences for collaboration. From the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the legislative assembly was "strengthened" by Viktor Medvedchuk's Crimean ally Oleg Slyusarenko, who, with active complicity with the occupiers, has not received at least some position on the peninsula for eight years. Oleg Slyusarenko is known in Crimea as a participant and organizer of various, including radical, pro-Russian street actions. In 2017, the name of Oleg Slyusarenko sounded in the context of the cooperation of his organization "Our Great Victory" with "Montenegrin terrorists" - a group of persons suspected of preparing a coup d'état in Montenegro.
The eighth number in the list of deputies of the Kherson Regional Duma is the current deputy chairman of the regional government Vitaly Bulyuk. Ranshewas a Ukrainian patriot and back in April 2022 wrote on social networks that "Kherson is Ukraine", but a month later he became a member of the occupation authorities.
In addition to the Ukrainians who remained in the occupied territories, 340 Russians from 39 regions participated in the elections to the legislative assemblies of the four occupied territories. There were apparently enough people willing to run that the Kremlin had to send reinforcements from Russia, adding to the lists rank-and-file bureaucrats from the presidential administration, such as Oleg Nesterov, an employee of the Kremlin administration, who was sanctioned by the United States for coordination "referendum" in the Zaporozhye region and the creation of "filtration points".
In the occupied part of the Kherson region, the second number on the party list from the ruling party was an odious character - State Duma deputy Igor Kastyukevich, who organized the deportation of children from a Kherson boarding school in the fall of 2022. At least 14 children from Kherson ended up in the orphanage "Herringbone", which was called a "children's concentration camp" because of the cruel treatment of pupils.
Russian "troops" make up about a fifth of the list of "United Russia" in the Donetsk region. Among them are the well-known kickboxer Vladimir Mineev, who at the beginning of the year, allegedly volunteered for the Russian army, the current deputy of the City Council of Rostov-on-Don Pyotr Pyatibratov and the non-public Kremlin political strategist Artem Perekhrist.
In the Luhansk region, the party nominates the Don Cossacks: State Duma deputy Viktor Vodolatsky and "supreme ataman" Nikolai Dyakonov.
In these so-called elections in the occupied territories, there were no federal figures on the party lists, except, perhaps, the well-known bribe-taker Slutsky, who decided to run in all four regions at once. However, he is unlikely to leave the chair of the head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs.
For the most part, these are serial candidates, that is, people who ran several times in elections at different levels in Russia, but did not pass anywhere. Some of them went somewhere 15-20 times. And now they continue their career as "serial killers" in the occupied territories. Although there are those who, apparently, are determined to solve their business issues in these territories, for this they decided to acquire "crusts".
As for the legitimacy of all these "people's councils", even those who ran there seem to have no illusions.
