Olha is among them. She is a doctor, about forty. “I couldn’t sleep. I was so eager for this vote,” she explains, excited. She claims that all her relatives and friends will take part in the referendum. Why? “Nobody wants to live with fascists.” That’s how she describes the advocates of a united Ukraine.
This opinion is shared by Valentina, Olha’s neighbor, who is a little older. She can’t say that her entire family is going to vote. Valentina’s relatives don’t live in Donetsk but in Kiev, and what is worse, they support the “fascists.”
“I don’t want to know them anymore, I have broken all contact,” she says frankly. Valentina’s behavior is not unusual. No Ukrainian conflict has ever shaken society as this one has. Many people like Valentina declare they will never speak with their relatives again because there is nothing to talk about. The proponents of a united Ukraine act in a similar manner. They don’t want to deal with those who take the Russian side. The champions of the Donetsk People’s Republic are nicknamed “the zombified,” which means made totally stupid by Russian propaganda. There are instances in which after a few months of silence somebody’s uncle or aunt calls from Crimea, Rostov, or the vicinity of Moscow. They have simply packed up and left, without notifying anybody. They believe that in Russia and in occupied Crimea war will not happen.
At eight o’clock the station is still closed because two thousand ballots are not there yet. “They are coming,” explains Larisa, a member of the polling commission. She assures me that there is nothing to worry about because the commission is very experienced. Its members have been participating in elections organized by the Ukrainian state for many years. In fact, at first glance everything looks as if official elections are taking place, except for the missing ballots and the lack of Ukrainian state symbols in the polling station. When the delayed ballots finally arrive, the commission members start counting them immediately. They do it very quickly and the voting may begin.
Two see-through ballot boxes stand in the middle of the room. Such are always used in Ukraine to make elections more transparent. Because of this, however, people are under more pressure since it is very easy to see if a voter made the “correct” choice. The official forms for authenticating the vote—the protocols—have been dropped in the ballot boxes, then the boxes have been secured. On the right side there are voting booths where you can tranquilly answer a rather awkwardly phrased question: “Do you support the independence act of the Donetsk People’s Republic?” The commission’s tables are behind the booths. There you can find your address and get a ballot.
A few minutes after eight voting is finally possible. Fifty people, more or less, instantly come inside. They are of different ages, but elderly people predominate. The first ballots are dropping into the box.
“For, for, for, for,” I mumble. “Oh, there is one against.” I show it to a lady journalist standing next to me. In the polling stations that I visit the majority of voters have supported the independence of the Donetsk region.
In the afternoon crowds of people go out into the Donetsk streets. Most of them take advantage of the day off to have a walk with their family or to meet friends. Social life is blooming on Pushkin Boulevard in the city center. Waiters can’t complain about being bored. Families with children walk along the boulevard.
You can easily spot people who are not going to vote. “It’s a farce,” they sum things up. Nonetheless, they don’t want to talk to the media and they speak in low voices. This is not surprising. In May many pro-Ukrainian activists left the city because they feared for their lives. Their personal information was widely “distributed.” There were always people willing to denounce a “fascist.”
The indifferent majority of people want to live their lives and try not to pay any attention to what is happening all around them. Perhaps they are scared because not so long ago thousands of people with Ukrainian flags would take to the streets, shouting “Glory to Donbas, glory to the miners,” and now they are not there anymore. Demonstrators abandoned by Kiev and intimidated by the “people’s republics” keep to themselves at home or leave the city. The only Ukrainian politician I have met here is Oleh Lyashko, a populist from the Radical Party.
Oleksandr, a twenty-something casually strolling down Pushkin Boulevard, has not left yet. You can see from a distance that he doesn’t fit here. The referendum is not his thing.
“I am not taking part in this. It is a fraud,” he says loudly, although the polling commission is just some fifty meters away and the advocates of separatism are wandering around. “I want to live in a united Ukraine. If Donbas declares its independence, most likely I will move to the central or western part of the country,” he adds with self-confidence. For now, Donetsk means Ukraine, and Oleksandr, who graduated from college, has a job and is not leaving.
We didn’t have to wait too long for the ballots to arrive at the station, simply because they are reproduced, without any supervision, by the copying machines located in the Central Election Commission. In principle, all voters could come with their own ballots that had been printed out at home. The ballot template had been circulating on the internet for a while. The complete voting lists are missing, too. You can just bring your passport with a stamp proving that you reside in the Donetsk region and you can vote.
“There are many people who can’t vote in their own places or who work in Donetsk, so we have offered them this opportunity,” explains Larisa from the polling commission. Everything would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that those people can vote in every polling station, because nobody can possibly check if a particular voter hasn’t already voted somewhere else. With some ingenuity, even someone officially registered as living in Donetsk will be able to vote in several places without a problem.
Roman Lagin, the president of the Central Election Commission of the Donetsk Republic, claims that in Donetsk proper there are 118 polling stations and in the entire region there are 1,527. But it looks as if these numbers are made up. A day before the referendum I asked the separatists’ representatives if a list of the polling stations existed. They answered that it didn’t. Until the very end, as well, nobody knew the locations of the polling stations. Some Donetsk residents were completely lost. They would come to where voting used to take place in the past, but the polling stations were not there anymore.
“Where is a polling station?” a forty-something Donetsk resident is asking loudly. The passersby are trying to help him, but it turns out that they themselves don’t know where to vote either.
Thanks to the limited number of polling stations it was easier to create the impression of crowds rushing en masse to vote. Many journalists attended only the opening of the polling places. The most committed groups of voters were already waiting there. These were the avid champions of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The polling stations were open from eight in the morning to eleven at night. Later in the day the turnout was smaller. The ballot boxes were half filled, or even less.
“Seventy percent of the people have already voted here,” a member of one commission tries to convince me at five in the afternoon. The number of ballots in the boxes proves otherwise. In each station I hear stories about the successful turnout.
I ask Larisa from the polling commission if I can stay when the votes are counted. “Nobody can stay, not even observers, just the members of the commission,” she states with great satisfaction. According to her, this indicates that if the commission is left alone with the ballot boxes, the elections are honest. She has managed to throw me off guard, so I don’t ask another question.