Ukrainian Regional Elections Reveal a Country Plagued with Troubles

A Ukrainian Voting Station, where ballots are being counted for mayoral elections.

Elections were held across Ukraine Sunday for regional leaders for the country, the Washington Post reports. These elections were widely seen as meant to send a mandate from the people to the policies of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Although the results of the elections will likely not be counted for another couple of days, the atmosphere of the elections themselves only highlighted the deepening troubles that Ukraine faces.

Exit polls at fist estimated that there was only about a 36% voter turnout; an incredibly low amount for a country whose people only recently ousted its leader due to, among other things, not having their voices heard. A Ukrainian source later claimed that participation overall was around 46%, although that is not much better. Across the country, people seemed disinterested and dissatisfied with the elections. In one city, elections were not even held at all due to reported ballot errors. And of course, elections were not held in the regions controlled by pro-Russian separatists.

Certainly, Russian Intervention and the War in Donbass have been very pressing problems for Ukraine over the past year and a half. However, according to many voters, Russia is not the primary concern of average Ukrainians anymore. Instead, they are focused on the increasingly troubled economy and corruption. Ukraine is experiencing a drastic rising in prices and its national currency has been devalued. Corruption remains persistent, as oligarchs in the country retain much of the power in the country.

As the threat of Russia is beginning to recede, and with a ceasefire between Ukraine and the rebels being largely respected, Ukrainians are now turning to the more practical problems that face the country: how will they get food on the table, and how will they reform their troubled government? Just because the Poroshenko Administration is Pro-Western does not change the urgency of these problems.

However, when Poroshenko came into office, he promised speedy and meaningful reform. In his self-described “kamikaze government,” he told people among other things that Ukraine would join NATO by 2020, and on that same year, his country would start its application to join the European Union. Both of these projections are rather optimistic to say the least, but to the Ukrainian people, this gave them hope that their corrupted government could break away from the oligarchs and join the West as a developed nation.

But as time dragged on, the economy only grew worse. Some have felt that corruption has only gotten worse in the country. Reforms promised by the so-called “kamikaze government” have been slow-coming. This caused a disillusionment among the public, leading to low-energy elections with very low voter turnout. The Ukrainian activists that led the Euromaidan protests in 2014 have been particularly dissatisfied, claiming that Poroshenko has simply maintained the status quo of corruption and little reform in the country. His approval rating is at a current low of 26%.

The elections were not all bad signs; many groups have claimed that the elections have become much more transparent than they have been in the past. But Poroshenko’s reforms have been disappointing. Some have decided to vote for Ukraine’s Opposition Bloc, ousted President Victor Yanukovych’s old party which favors non-alignment and warm relations with Russia, just to send the message to the President that he is not doing enough to help the country. And he is not.

From the looks of various exit polls, it looks like the governing parties will retain control of many cities in the Western and Central regions of the country. But just because Ukrainians there prefer the government to the even more corrupt Opposition Bloc does not mean that they are happy with the government. If President Poroshenko wants to maintain, and even gain, support for his country’s path towards the West as a liberal democracy, then he must make meaningful reforms to cut back on the reach of the oligarchs in his country and make Ukrainians feel more secure about their economy.

Japan and Natural Gas-Rich Turkmenistan Sign Energy Deal

A model pipe in Turkmenistan, a symbol of the country’s soon-to-be booming natural gas industry.

On a recent trip to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a group of Japanese business officials met with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, and signed many significant energy deals, Deutsche Welle reports. Among them, the biggest is likely Japanese engineering giant JGC joining an effort to create a large plant around the country’s large natural gas reserves.

The Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan has the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world, with 17.5 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves. To put this in perspective, Turkmenistan has nearly double the amount of reserves as the country with the fifth largest natural gas reserves, the United States.

The Japanese-Turkmenistan energy deals that were officially signed on Friday are estimated to be worth over $18 billion. Prime Minister Abe, in an official statement, said that the “government bodies and private companies of Japan, as a united team, will work as much as possible with Turkmenistan with the goal of reaching a new milestone in its industrial development with the active use of natural gas.” However, Japan is certainly not alone in looking to help develop Turkmenistan’s natural gas reserves.

For quite some time now, Turkmenistan’s natural gas market has been dominated by Russia’s Gazprom industries, which currently makes up two-thirds of all of the country’s gas exports. However, Ashgabat has increasingly accused Gazprom of being an unreliable business partner, this summer claiming that Gazprom had not paid for any of its gas exports that year. As spats between Gazprom and Turkmenistan have increased over the years, Turkmenistan has moved to become less dependent on Russia in energy sectors.

In response to this, other countries and energy businesses have jumped at the chance of getting access to the large Turkmen gas fields. China currently imports up to 35 billion cubic meters of gas per year, and that number is only expected to increase as China will likely eventually replace Russia as Turkmenistan’s leading trading partner. European countries have also tried to tap into Turkmenistan’s energy potential, as they also hope to lessen dependence on Russia for natural gas. Turkmenistan has even set up an ambitious project to build a pipeline from its country to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India; countries that are very much in need of natural gas. And despite concerns about its feasibility, Japanese businesses still have interest in investing in the pipeline, which is expected to begin production December this year or early next year.

As the totalitarian Central Asian nation’s reserves become more developed (through deals like the ones made with Japan, which will increase Turkmenistan’s technological capabilities to make its abundant gas actually usable), the more the competition for natural gas in the country will grow. As a neutral country, Turkmenistan can find itself working with liberal Western countries, third world countries, and pretty anyone its leader Berdymukhamedov sees fit.

However, Turkmenistan is still an incredibly closed-off and totalitarian country. It hides behind a veil of proclaimed neutrality to disguise its massive human rights abuses, which are on par with some of the worst in the world. And very few foreigners are ever allowed into the country. But through this increased business that is only expected to continue at a steady pace, there is a chance that Turkmenistan may open up, if only just a little; and in this case, although human rights would likely not improve in the country, they may at least be more out in the open, exposed for the global public at large to see.

Dutch Report Finds that Russian Missiles Used to Down MH17

Wreckage from the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

After a 15 month investigation into the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over the Donetsk region of Ukraine, an international investigation team led by the Dutch Safety Board has finally announced its findings: most prominent among them is that the airliner was brought down with a Russian-made BUK missile system. Ultimately, however, both sides remained firm in their positions: the West and Ukraine that the evidence shows that the civilian plane of 298 passengers was taken down by the Russian-backed separatists, and Russia and the separatists that it was taken down by Ukraine. Both Russia and Ukraine are in possession of BUK surface-to-air missile systems, and the Dutch report did not rule one party entirely responsible, so on the surface it may seem like either party could have taken the plane down.

It should be noted that the Ukrainian Government is not completely blameless in this attack. As the Dutch report itself says, Ukrainian Air Traffic Control should have closed the airspace over Donetsk. Over the War in Donbass, there have been too many downed military aircraft in the area, and this should have been a clear indicator to Ukraine to not allow any civilian planes to fly over the area. If the airspace over and the other conflict areas of Eastern Ukraine had been cut off, then this incident would not have happened, period. In this regard, Malaysian Airliners is also at fault for not trying to redirect the flight away from the area.

But that does not mean that Russia is innocent, as all Russian media outlets want you to believe; nor does it mean that Ukraine had anything to do with the actual downing of the MH17 in July of last year. The Russian media was quick to point out that Ukraine too had a BUK missile system from the Soviet era, and as the plane crashed on Ukrainian soil, they are still to blame. They claim that the accusations that the BUK missile system was instead Russian-owned and given to the separatists by Russians is absurd, and is simply part of an “information war” by the West against Russia.

Except the theory that MH17 was taken down by BUK missiles is not exactly a new theory: in fact, it was one of the first suggestions capitulated by both American and Ukrainian officials very soon after the crash. Their claims were backed up by leading scientists and specialists in the field. At the very least, the American and Western media outlets have been consistent in their reporting of the event. The same cannot be said about their Russian counterparts (which are, of course, monitored by the government): many a conspiracy theory has been spewed from the likes of RT, Rossiya-1, and other outlets, from the flight being downed directly by the CIA, or the MH17 actually being a disguised version of the long-missing Malaysian Airliner 370, planted with corpses over Ukraine to intentionally crash. Whatever the case, Russia has only been consistent in whom the perpetrators are: Ukraine and America.

In the meantime, the evidence that the missiles were fired by the Russian-backed separatists is clear: minutes after the airliner crashed down, Donbass separatist leader Igor Girkin boasted on social media that he had just downed a Ukrainian military plane. A mere 40 minutes later, according to the Russian media itself, Alexander Borodai, a prominent Russian revolutionary figure in Donetsk, called a Moscow media manager and stated that they had likely shot down a civilian airliner by mistake. In fact, it was the actions of the separatists, not the Ukrainian government, that led to the investigation going longer, due to the team not being able to reach the wreckage for quite some time.

And yet, even after all of this damning evidence, after the report was released Donetsk leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko denied any responsibility and rejected the report, and in response to the social media post on downing the Ukrainian military plane, stated that it was “probably a fake.” The Russian Government’s official position continues to be that Ukraine is responsible for the MH17’s downing, despite the report that confirms Ukraine and the West’s previous suspicions that BUK missiles were used. In the Russian media, some try to spin the report to continue to pin the blame on Ukraine, while others flat-out deny the legitimacy of the report and call for another investigation. This lack of coordination only further supports the idea that Ukraine was not behind the crash.

Once again, the Ukrainian government certainly is not entirely innocent; but they are not responsible for the downing. And the pro-Russian separatists certainly did not mean to intentionally down a civilian commercial airliner; but they should still be held accountable. But if the evidence before the report was not convincing enough, the Russians’ response to the team’s findings should be enough. All calls to the contrary are most definitely part of an information war, but not the type of information war that RT would like to have you believe.

Lukashenko Elected for a Fifth Term as President of Belarus

Billboard for the October 11 Presidential Elections in Belarus

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has won his fifth term in office, winning a whopping 83.5% of the votes, the Guardian reports. There was a voter turnout of around 87%, and the next most popular option in the election was “Against All” at 6.44% – gaining more votes than any of the other opposition candidates.

The results of this election are no surprise. Every election in Belarus since 1994, the one in which Lukashenko was first elected into power, has been rigged in the incumbent President’s favor; Belarusian elections are condemned by the OSCE and human rights organizations as undemocratic, and he is often described by Western media outlets as “the last dictator in Europe.” And although there may now be other dictators in Europe to join his ranks, that does not mean that he is any less of a dictator.

Since 1994, Lukashenko’s regime has run on platforms revolving around stability, independence, and Soviet nostalgia. Under the President, Belarus has reverted back to many Soviet policies such as state ownership of many industries in Belarus and fining the unemployed because they are “pests” to society. He even staged a referendum back in the 1990s to change the flag of Belarus from the historical white-red-white design used immediately after independence to a version of the old Soviet flag of Belarus, minus the hammer and sickle. This controversial referendum also made Russian a co-official language of Belarus and supported economic integration with Russia, but was lambasted by both international organizations and local groups as illegitimate and illegal.

In fact, since Lukashenko was elected, there has been very little democracy within this isolated nation within Eastern Europe. The President has had a near absolute control on all elections and referendums in this country. So it is no surprise that this recent election is no different. However, this election is not significant for the election process itself, which is undemocratic, or even the results, which are largely illegitimate, but for what might be coming in the aftermath of the election.

In the last 2010 presidential election, there was a massive crackdown after the ballots were cast on many opposition politicians and protesters in Belarus. Estimates place the number of people who were arrested afterwards at around 700 people, including 7 of the opposition candidates that ran in the election. The protesters, whom the government claimed were barbarous hooligans who attempted to raid governmental buildings, were brutally beaten. This scene is reminiscent of the aftermath of the previous presidential election in 2006, in which an attempted revolution (dubbed the “Jeans Revolution” by pro-democratic Belarusian protesters) was once again brutally suppressed.

However, this time, response to protesters might be different. Although Lukashenko has previously touted pro-Russian and anti-Western policies as described above, he appears to be growing increasingly more weary of his neighbor to the East. In response to Russia’s attempts to try to build an airbase in the country, Lukashenko responded that his country did not need another airbase. Not to mention the fact that he has, if only mildly, supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Likely in response to these views, the EU appears to be on track to suspend economic sanctions imposed on the country due to its undemocratic positions, in spite of the recent election.

Chances are, though, that the EU will reimpose sanctions if another high-profile crackdown occurs after the election, particularly if it is as bloody as the last two. So if Lukashenko truly wishes to warm up his country’s relations with the West, then he may have no choice but to give the protesters at least some leeway to protest the election’s results.

Although it is not a large victory for free speech, it is at least a small development in a country that has very little free speech to begin with.

Amnesty International Activists Deported from Azerbaijan

An Azerbaijani dissident, being dragged away by authorities.

This past week, Amnesty International Activists were turned away from the Southern Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan after only just landing in the Heydar Aliyev Airport in Baku. According to one of the activists who was deported, Natalia Nozadze, her group was met with scrutiny at the immigration desk after a series of calls back and forth, and they were eventually told that they would have to take the next flight out of the country.

Amnesty International is an independent, international group that deals with promoting human rights and exposing abuses by governments across the globe. Ms. Nozadze, who is the group’s Researcher on Azerbaijan, was coming to meet with various people and journalists to discuss the human rights situation in the country. But this time, she said, there were much fewer people on her list to meet. This is most likely because the few remaining independent journalists, opposition figures, and critics of the government are under increasing pressure in the country.

Azerbaijan has never been known for having a good human rights record. Since 1993, the country has been ruled by the incredibly corrupt and authoritarian Aliyev family, who came to power after a coup ousted the democratically-elected president of Azerbaijan. It should be noted that Heydar Aliyev, the first president to come to power after the coup, was also the leader of Soviet Azerbaijan. After Heydar’s death in 2003, his son, Ilham, became president. And under the grip of Ilham Aliyev, human rights have not improved in Azerbaijan: they have gotten worse.

However, instead of moving closer to Russia or deciding to isolate itself from the international community, Azerbaijan for quite some time has had surprisingly cordial relations with the West, and in particular, the European Union. The two signed a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in 1996, an agreement which both sides benefited from. In fact, over the past decade Azerbaijan has increasingly cooperated and integrated into the European community: it joined the Council of Europe in 2001, of which it remains an active member; it has welcomed the entry of various European businesses in the country, particularly relating to its plentiful oil fields; and, last but certainly not least, earlier this year Azerbaijan hosted the first European Games, of which all European countries took part, even its arch-rival Armenia.

However, the 2015 Baku European Games also highlight an increasing conflict of interests for Azerbaijan: its desire to open up its country to the world and increase ties with the West, and its attempts to try to crack down on criticism of Azerbaijan from both within and outside of the country. As a result, President Aliyev’s grip on dissent only increased. In reference to the Baku Games, Human Rights Watch claimed that it was the “worst crackdown the country has seen in the post-Soviet era.” Multiple international journalists were barred from entering the country. Other journalists and activists were jailed and beaten. For a country that has placed much importance on its relationship with democratic Europe, the increased crackdowns during the Games made many Western leaders uneasy, to say the least.

However, one of Azerbaijan’s most vocal critics for its human rights abuses has not been a country at all: instead, it has been groups like Amnesty International who have lashed out at the country. This fact likely provides an explanation as to why Ms. Nozadze and her colleagues were turned away from the country.

However, despite how increasingly challenging it has become for these groups to criticize the Azerbaijani government, with the increased crackdowns on dissent that have followed the Games it has become more important than ever. Although some European leaders have chastised the Aliyev and his government for his abuses and corruption, it will likely not signal a dramatic shift in EU policy towards Azerbaijan. But hopefully, if the word continues to spread through groups like Amnesty International that Azerbaijan is despotic dictatorship and its human rights are only growing increasingly worse, maybe they will get the hint that Azerbaijan should be no partner of Europe.

On the other hand, if this trend of simply turning dissidents away at the airport increases, then Azerbaijan may be isolating itself all on its own.

The Kyrgyz Parliamentary Elections: Progress, but More is Needed

Posters on buses promoting the Kyrgyzstan Parliamentary Elections.

Over the weekend, something very rare happened in the Central Asia region: a competitive election. In the nation of Kyrgyzstan, the 2015 Parliamentary Elections took place, and unlike most elections in the region, the results were difficult to predict.

Kyrgyzstan’s Social Democratic Party won the most votes, reports the Diplomat, but it was only able to gain 27.5% of the votes total. The party finishing second, the Respublika Ata-Jurt Party, gained 20% of the vote. In fact, a total of six parties, including two new parties, were able to pass the threshold and gain seats in the Kyrgyz Parliament, otherwise known as the Supreme Council. There are 120 seats total in the Supreme Council, and the fact that there are now six parties present in this legislature is very notable indeed.

Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and others praised the elections for being competitive, at least, and there were very few “serious irregularities” reported. The elections were conducted in a calm manner overall. However, that does not mean that there were not some problems with the elections.

One other aspect of the elections that made them unique in the Central Asian region was that, for the first time, Kyrgyzstan implemented a new bio-metric form of voter registration in order to stop voter fraud. Although it certainly makes the country stand out among the region, there have been some problems reported with it. Multiple voters reported that they were barred from voting due to not getting their bio-metric ID cards before the deadline to participate in the elections. Only 59% of the registered voters ended up casting ballots, and only 2.7 million of Kyrgyzstan’s 5 million people were able to register. But of those voting, only 3-5% reported any problems with the new system of voting. The new technology largely worked the way it was intended to work.

There were other discrepancies reported in multiple polling stations, as well as a lack of transparency with funding for the parties. In addition to this, the President of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambaev, has been accused of indirectly trying to campaign for his old party, the Social Democratic Party. Under Kyrgyz law, the President once elected must officially drop out of his party; but that did not stop Atambaev from making public appearances in support of the party.

However, the main problem with the elections was lack of major differences between the parties; most notably, nearly all of the parties that have gained seats in the Supreme Council hold Pro-Russian views. So whatever the outcome, the results would have always pushed Kyrgyzstan closer to Russia. Over the past few years, Kyrgyzstan has been growing closer and closer to Russia, with the Central Asian country just recently joining the Eurasian Economic Union. With this election, that trajectory does not seem to be changing.

But even more importantly, the fact that there were so few differences in the parties’ platforms could attribute to the fact that the results were so varied. The Kyrgyz people did not seem to be able to identify the clear differences between each of the six parties, and because of that, it was hard to determine which one to choose. This aspect is, overall the biggest flaw of the elections, and strike a blow to the seemingly-competitive nature at the polls.

However, the fact that these elections with actual competition is unique in a region where presidential candidates and parties get 99% of the votes cast and opposition figures are harassed and tortured. Although this election was very far from perfect, it should be hailed as a step towards progress in Kyrgyzstan; but if these major problems in the democratic system in the country are not addressed in the next election, and clear differences in the party do not form in order to give the people more options, then this progress could be for nothing.

The Next Step for Ukraine

French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, meeting during peace talks.

In all of the recent panic about the recent Russian airstrikes in Syria and increasing tensions with America, a very important development was overlooked by most media outlets in a once highly-discussed post-Soviet country: Ukraine. A recent deal, followed by further talks, may bring an end to the violence in Ukraine.

From Radio Free Europe, the Russian-backed rebels and Ukraine have reached an agreement to withdraw tanks and other weaponry from the front-lines in the Eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. The deal itself will take 39 days to fully carry out, so says representatives from the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, who helped the peace talks go through, along with Russia.

This deal set the stage for peace talks in Paris that began September 30th, and are continuing today. They feature the representatives from the signatories of the previous Minsk agreement: Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France. This will likely be the beginning of a long process that will eventually bring about a political settlement in Eastern Ukraine.

However, with minor skirmishes and exceptions over the past few months, major violence has largely stopped in the eastern part of the country. A ceasefire has been largely respected since September. Although political tension still very much remains, both sides are beginning to come together to find a political solution. For their part, the rebels are not trying to gain any more territory in Ukraine than they already have. And in the case of Crimea, although it still remains firmly in Russian hands, that situation has remained pretty stable for quite some time. Although Ukraine may protest the Russian annexation of the peninsula, there’s not much its government can do. So though the political tension in Ukraine may not go away anytime soon due to the historical, ethnic, and societal ties between Russia and Ukraine,  the consistent violence and panic in the country may be beginning to end, as it has been for some time now.

But even with the violence winding down in Ukraine, that does not mean that the country’s problems are over; in fact, Ukraine is far from it. The Ukrainian Economy is in dire straits. Aside from its smaller neighbor Moldova, Ukraine is the poorest country in all of Europe. If analysts say that Russia’s economy has plummeted, Ukraine’s has gone far beyond that. Not only has it been facing a recession since October 2013, but Russia still remains a key trading partner for Ukraine. So while it is slowly trying to seek out the European Union as a major trading partner, Russia’s current economic crisis still has heavy repercussions on Ukraine. Russia’s GDP yearly decline has been recorded at -4.6%; Ukraine’s decline is at -14.7%.

Ukraine’s manufacturing industry has also been heavily affected by the Ukrainian Conflict. Many of Ukraine’s largest private businesses and factories were stationed in Donetsk. The business climate in Ukraine is still restrictive. And much like in Russia, oligarchs in the country still maintain a large amount of influence in Ukraine. Certainly, Ukraine’s problems appear to be piling up.

This is all not to say that peace-talks between Ukraine and the rebels is not a big step, for the time being. French President Francois Hollande stated that the talks, and the implementation of the agreements reached in these talks, will likely go into next year. But the violent stage of the conflict appears to be mostly over. And if Ukraine is to avoid further violence from protesters in the future, then it must focus more heavily on the pressing, long-term problems that it faces if it ever hopes to achieve its goal of joining the West.