German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call that today’s planned elections in eastern Ukraine were illegitimate and would not be recognized by European leaders, a Berlin government spokesman said on Friday.
Merkel and Putin held a joint conversation with French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Merkel’s spokesman Georg Streiter said at a government news conference.
He said that in the call, there were diverging opinions on today’s “so-called elections” in the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Photo: Reuters
“Merkel and Hollande underlined that there can only be a ballot in line with Ukrainian law,” he said, adding that the vote would violate an agreement endorsed by Russia and further complicate efforts to end the crisis in eastern Ukraine.
“The German government will not recognize these illegitimate elections,” Streiter said.
European leaders are united on this issue and agreed on it at a summit last week in Brussels.
More than 3,700 people have been killed in fighting in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow rebels seek union with Russia. A ceasefire has been in force since September, but there have been isolated flareups of fighting.
A 12-point protocol — issued after talks in early September in the Belarussian capital of Minsk involving Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and separatist leaders — foresees the holding of “early local elections” in the east in accordance with Ukrainian legislation.
The Ukrainian leadership sees this as part of efforts to de-centralize power in the east to give people there greater say in running their own affairs — a strategy aimed at blunting calls for autonomy. It wants to hold these elections next month.
In Washington, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council said the US would not recognize any results from the vote.
“We also caution Russia against using any such illegitimate vote as a pretext to insert additional troops and military equipment into Ukraine, particularly in light of recent indications that the Russian military is moving forces back to the border along separatist-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine,” spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan added in a statement.
Today’s separatist poll is aimed at electing leaders and a parliament in a self-proclaimed autonomous republic.
Though Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow would recognize the results of the rebel vote, the Kremlin made no mention of the ballot in its account of the four-way phone-in on Friday.
“The Russian side speaks out in favor of establishing a sustainable dialogue between the central Ukrainian authorities and the representatives of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions which, beyond any doubt, would contribute to an overall stabilization of the situation,” it said in a statement.
Poroshenko on his Web site said that he, Merkel and Hollande had expressed a “clear, general position” not to recognize the election and had “called on Russia also not to recognize these elections.”
Speaking to a group of Western journalists on Friday, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin denounced “totally fake, unlawful elections with people trying to elect so-called presidents of Donetsk and Luhansk and a so-called parliament.”
“Russia must discourage the terrorists from carrying out these elections — it will be yet another step towards a ‘frozen conflict’ which is what we have to prevent there,” he said.
He said Kiev was committed to elections of local officials in the east with which a plan for de-centralization could be worked out, “but they should be clear local elections according to Ukrainian legislation.”
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