Lesya and I just got back from the inauguration. Our pictures of the event are here.

Unfortunately for us, we only left ourselves and extra half-hour until Yushchenko's speech to get there. As a result, by the time we got as close as we were going to, swimming through people the whole way, Yushchenko and the rest of folks were already hugging and walking out on stage.

I was able to see a glimpse of one of the big screens, but Lesya was below the shoulder-line and the press was so tight that in or fluffy winter coats we looked like a big package of marshmallows. Things got worse, with waves of people flowing around chaotically, so Lesya and I were forced to try to get around. By the time we managed to get all the way around the cordon of police officers, (by going up the street to the end, then climbing up a slope, going through a broken fence, walking four city blocks around and then coming back down the hill) everything had already ended.

On the plus side, while we weren't able to catch the speech we were on the may route out of the square for all the Ukrainian politicians. So we saw Yushchenko and Tymoshenko and the crew drive off, then a great number of other politicians as they walked up to the waiting buses. Among them were Poroshenko, Zinchenko, Russian politician Nemtsov, Kwaśniewski – the President of Poland, Vaclev Havel, and even Colin Powell. How cool.

From my angle I wasn't able to get pictures of any of them besides Poroshenko and Zinchenko, unfortunately. I got two glimpses of Colin Powell and a picture of him the second time that is basically a blur in a dark coat getting into a bus.

Oh well.

As far as the number of people there, it beat New Years hands down. There were people everywhere. They went up the hill, down the street, up behind everything, out into European Square, and more. For safety reasons no one was allowed on the bridge we saw Tymoshenko from in late November, so some people had clambered out on the support beams under the bridge. It did Lesya and my hearts' good to see the excitement level so high for what is essentially a formality, and one that is rarely even presented to the public, let alone presented to an uncountable mass of the public.

It also did us good to see a bunch of younger Ukrainians with us clambering and slipping on their way up icy slopes and through back alleys to try to get to a speech that all of us must have known we'd already missed.

That's political participation at its most fervent.

Yushchenko's Speech

[For this we're relying on the excellent political coverage provided by Lesya's mom, who watched the events at home on live TV. Not only were Lesya and I unable to hear, none of the people we asked were able to either, there were so many people between them and the stage.]

Yushchenko started at around 11:00 in the Parliament building swearing on three books – the Bible, the Constitution, and another book, (I'll tell you when I know which one). He went through all the vows he was required to make, but just before he finished he said words to this effect: “Now, I do not want to finish my vows here, I want to go out to Maidan and finish them in front of the people who made this all possible.”

And with that they went off to Maidan. Yushchenko's campaign had invited the whole nation to his speech at 1:30. Most of them appeared to have shown up.

His speech held few surprises. He started off with thanks to the Ukrainian people for their vote, and a special thanks to Maidan and the people in Tent City. After that he went on to finish his oath in front of the head of the Constitutional Court. After that he listed the ten points from his campaign again (available on his site at www.razom.org.ua). They included fighting corruption, pursuing good relations with all neighbors – not an “eastern” or “western” focus, and so forth.

He finished with his usual: “Glory to God and glory to Ukraine!”

And that was that.

Now we wait for word on who will be in his Cabinet.

When the Orange Revolution got started, I commented that I was kicking myself for forgetting the first rule of Ukraine: everything here happens at the very last possible minute, then they change the date and put it off a bit longer because they've found a way to put off the last minute until a few minutes later.

It happened again, twice, with this inauguration. First I thought it would be on the 20th or 21st according to the hints people were dropping. Then I quickly changed it to the 22nd, because we finally got a solid date on the radio. Now, finally, we have the official word in writing on a government decree, so I dearly hope I can rely on this number:

pursuant to Article 104 of the Constitution of Ukraine and the Resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine "On procedure for Holding Ceremonial Session of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Dedicated to Taking the Oath by Newly Elected President of Ukraine" dd. December 14, 2004, to hold a ceremonial session of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in the session hall of the parliament on January 23, 2005 dedicated to taking the oath by the newly elected President of Ukraine.

Sorry to everybody for jumping the gun a couple times. I've read people quoting dates anywhere from the 14th to the 21st for the last two weeks and got antsy. The final-final official date is January 23. [thanks to the Action Ukraine Report for the article]

[update: the inauguration will actually take place on the January 22, again according to the radio]

The Supreme court just dismissed Yanukovych's last appeal, according to the radio. The way is now open for Yushchenko's inauguration.

In this Ukrayinska Pravda article (In Ukrainian) the magazine quotes a Yushchenko aide as stating that Yushchenko's inauguration will happen on either January 20 or 21.

Still no word on who Yushchenko will nominate for Prime Minister. The frontrunners are still Poroshenko and Tymoshenko. In this excellent Zerkalo Nedeli article, the paper, with customary exhaustiveness, details all the potential pros and cons of each candidate. Along the way it worries that Yushchenko's political slowness will mean he loses his incredible support and fritters away time without being able to make positive changes.

In recent hectic days I've just been trying to keep up with current events as they happen and add a modicrum of commentary before passing them on to you. However, now it looks like we'll have a bit of a slow period until Yushchenko's 13 Jan inauguration, so I thought I'd try to do some more analysis.

One thing that struck me during the marathon political debate Lesya and I had with our friends on New Year's was this: lack of media transparency in government does not necessarily mean less political punditry, it just means less informed political punditry.

Among the things we tried to piece apart were questions like:

1. Why didn't Kuchma use Russian troops so many people (including Omelchenko) are sure he brought into Kyiv to deal with the protesters? Why didn't he use violent repression?
2. Why did Kuchma pick Yanukovych and not a more palatable candidate? (which Discoshaman and I have talked about before, and he provides a possible reason for here)
3. Who really killed Kirpa, and why? Same goes for
4. What is likely to happen in the upcoming months? What kind of odds is Yushchenko working against, and what might he accomplish?

There were other questions, but those were a few of the major ones. The thing that we kept coming back to was that there wasn't much information on Kirpa. On 30 Dec, Prosecutor General Piskun said "as things have developed so far, all of this looks most like suicide"(in Russian at Glavred). But then, when the news broke on the day after his death, reports indicated that he'd died from multiple gunshot wounds, putting him among the most determined suicides. (Go to Zerkalo Nedeli of you want even more reasons to question the look of suicide.)

So as with many events, we logically reject the official verdict and are then left to speculate about who actually killed him. At one point, we paged to a particularly eerie picture from the Kyiv Post, showing Kuchma, Medvedchuk, and Yanukovych standing by over the coffin at Kirpa's funeral. Kuchma is staring off in the middle distance, Yanukovych also, and Medvedchuk just stands there with a frown so pronounced it seems almost comic. These were the kinds of subjective trifles we were working from.

There were plenty of plausible killers and motives, the sheer range of potential suspects would make this a great mystery. But the important thing is that since we had so little trust in Piskun and the Prosecutor General's Office, we had no extra facts to work with. It would be like trying to solve the murder knowing only the material from chapter one.

Of course we could not. The same went for Yushchenko's poisoning: could have been Kuchma or one of his, could have been Yanukovych or one of his, could have been Russia. We didn't have enough facts to get even an educated guess.

This is the greatest loss to a country from lack of transparency in government complicated by widespread conflicts of interest is the sense of being able to find anything definite. We had trouble enough ascribing motives and determining causes for these major events despite intensive reporting. More minor events were often even less readable. Start with major business interests controlling much of the media and working in the government and when something, anything, happens in the country, everyone starts speculating in overdrive. They feel free to reject contrasting news reports for the often logical reason that they may contain totally skewing the information.

What you get is a countrywide assumption of guilt concerning all actors in any event. This, in turn, leads to major problems considering that most illegal actions will include one right and one wrong person, irrespective of their right or wrongness in other circumstances. The alternative to blanket pessimism is the often teeth-grinding commitment to only work from established facts, which can be had only from a few organizations infrequently. It would also require that an individual, for example, seriously consider the possibility tht Kirpa killed himself under these very suspicious circumstances, on the word of a highly questionable Prosecutor General .

No surprise then that most everyone slips into creaky conjecture sometimes. The sense of it is like estimating the distance between the roofs of two adjacent buildings, then attempting to bridge the two with a long line of two-by-fours nailed end to end. It is a constant difficulty in Eastern European politics which I find no parallel for in Western politics.

It is also a cause for much mutual misunderstanding. I would have trouble explaining to people how much more straightforward it is to analyze American politics when there is so much journalistic observation you have a guy like Bob Woodward tagging around after presidence like a terrier. It is probably the reason for one of the most amusing occurences I remember from being an election observer.

I sat through a couple OSCE training sessions on how the Ukrainian election was set up, and from them created the following rule: During the question and answer period, if the observer asking the question was from a Scandinavian country, the question would be an insightful one about a small but vital process-related detail. The answer would almost invariably be that the Ukrainian law was not specific about that detail, and the poor Scandinavian observer would sit down, mind boggling at the potential for misunderstanding or misapplication of the rules.

Eventually the election came off, and the OSCE repeatedly congratulated many polling stations for coming up with good quick-fix solutions when problems occured. People were able to muddle through, but the whole progress of the thing included enough waiting until the last minute and then dealing with crises on the spot to make even the calmest Western observers a little edgy at times.

That's all events in Ukraine. It's also why natives so often shrug in answer to major questions.

Great crop of English articles from Zerkalo Nedeli this Monday.

First is "Perpetual Vote", which is probably the best analysis of the political opportunities and threats ahead of Yushchenko in the upcoming year that I have read, including Taras Kuzio's stuff.

Second is "Mahatma Yushchenko and Russia", which is a riff on why Yushchenko's  reconciliation overtures to Russia are good. (the overtures being just part of what I like to call Yushchenko's bid for "Classiest Man on Earth", along with his stern resolve not to bicker about the fact that administration supporters tried to kill him)

Third is "The Presidential Administration Consultation", is an interview with the witness who provided the Supreme Court with the "irrefutable evidence" that the Yanukovcyh's team rigged the election.

There's also an article on the Constitutional Court decision, but that decision was made on Saturday morning, so it's mostly just a refresher on what the case involved.

 

Third Round a Significant Improvement

So here are the OSCE findings for the election.

The OSCE says this round of the election "brought Ukraine substantially closer to meeting international standards". The OSCE sent the most observers to Ukraine in its history: 1,370. My congratulations and warmest thanks go out to all those folks who skipped Christmas to promote democracy.

Lots of Europeans, from PACE and the European Parliament and the OSCE, congratulated Ukraine on much improvement. They gave most of the credit to citizens for standing up for their rights. Talk was about "building blocks" and progress and whatnot.

The overall mood was upbeat, and the report positive. The problems the OSCE found were smaller in scale than last time.

The OSCE was bothered by inflammatory material. (while Yanukovych's campaign-manager, Chornovil, complained most vociferously about Yushchenko partisan symbols in polling stations, the OSCE mentioned mostly things like pamphlets handed out at Yanukovych rallies that linked Yushchenko to Nazism)

Understandably, the OSCE also saw problems with voting from home, after an election amendment article limiting voting to only the most extremely handicapped was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court the day before. They say Ukrainians did a good job trying to come up with makeshift solutions. (they always do, in my experience)

If you are a really concerned individual, you can read the full OSCE report here.

My thoughts on the document are:

• It is astounding how half a million Polling Station Committee members were collected in less than a month. This wasn't just a matter of bringing back old members, because the representation in round 2 was for the original 24 candidates from round 1. The amendments meant the committees would be composed of representatives of only two candidates. More Ukrainian resilience in tough circumstances.
• A big round of applause for the new CEC members. They worked really hard and came out with initial results with remarkable speed. I was able to analyze the Election situation today, and if I had been awake, probably could have gotten a representative analysis done by 6am this morning.
• The range of views in the media was much more diverse, leading the OSCE to believe the "temnyky" booklets were no more. (Temnyky "dark booklets" were periodically released instructions from the administration telling journalists how and what to report) While the talk of "temnyky" is always speculative, I think it is accurate here. This is because I suspect finding reports guided by temnyky is like finding plagarized papers in a classroom. It's hard to describe how to find such a document without a specific example in front of you, but if you know what you're doing, it's not that hard to figure out which are the legitimate documents and which not.
• The OSCE comes right out and says opposition-friendly Channel 5 is "biased" towards Yushchenko. While I love the station for its feistiness (I lost track of how many times the administration tried to shut them down during the fall campaign), I think the OSCE is right. They are a great station, but that doesn't mean they're always even-handed.

packed with nutritious facts

So here are some observations and analysis of the CEC numbers at: http://www.cvk.gov.ua/wp0011e (sometimes this link doesn't seem to work, in which case go to http://www.cvk.gov.ua/ then click on the "Вибори Президента України 2004" link and on the British flag in the upper right corner of the screen.

So with 98.95% of the votes in, the results are as follows:

Yushchenko: 52.21%     Yanukovych: 44.00%     Against All: 2.34%

I am a little surprised that the difference between candidates is less than 10%, when I compare them to the 10-20% spread on the exit polls. This could theoretically be due to Yushchenko supporters being more happy to tell a bunch of pollsters how they voted. (many of the polls being conducted by eager looking younger folks who might intimidate older Yanukovych voters into thinking they might be punished for answering against Yushchenko) The difference could also reflect some of the continuing election fixing activities that went on, though the opposition said it was much less pronounced in this round. I trust the CEC this time around, because the opposition trusts it this time around.

The Yanukovych Voter Spike

Unfortunately, as the CEC uses frames, I have to give you directions to pages rather than a link. It's still worth it.

The most useful and info-rich graphic is unfortunately only in Ukrainian. Go to "Вибори Президента України 2004", the main page. On the left-hand menu bar, click Порівняння голосування 31.10.2004, 21.11.2004, 26.12.2004. It's the only option in the menu bar that includes numbers.

You will see a graphic with three bar charts for all of Ukraine, followed by charts for each region (corresponding to rounds 1, 2, and 3. To the right of that are columns for Yushchenko votes, Yanukovych votes, total votes accounted for, the percentage of voters who voted, and arrows indicating whether the number of participating voters rose or fell between rounds.

If you can read some Cyrrilic, you will be able to see that without exception, voter participation in pro-Yanukovych areas spiked by around 9% between rounds 1 and 2, then fell, often by as much as 5%, between 2 and 3. Without exception, Yushchenko voting changed by no more than 3% between any two rounds, even after all of the events on Maidan.

Donetsk and Luhansk are, of course, the starkest examples.

Turnout          Donetsk                   Luhansk

Round 1          78.08%                   75.60%
Round 2          96.64%                   89.49%
Round 3          84.20%                   84.27%

For comparison, here are the most pro-Yushchenko areas:

Turnout          Ternopil                     L'viv

Round 1          84.91%                    80.80%
Round 2          86.63%                    83.46%
Round 3          88.81%                    85.29%

 

When those trying to cast doubt on the opposition victory tell you: "So a 92% pro-Yanukovych vote in Luhansk is obviously fraud, but an 93% pro-Yushchenko vote in Ternopil is not? Such hypocricy!" You can say, "It sure is, when 15% more of those pro-Yanukovych people appear for round two!" You can then go on to point out the taped conversations (part 1 and part 2) of Yanukovych's staff as they carried out the fraud, and also the massive number of observer-recorded abuses in the East matched by none, or almost none in the West.

Ok all, before I finally call it a night, er, scratch that, an early morning, I'm going to give the last word to the tent city protesters. Discoshaman from www.postmodernclog.com and I walked by Tent City just before calling it a night tonight.

The crowds were thinning out as it was already 3am. There were a couple young men with Yanukovych bandanas and communist hammer and sickle handkerchiefs wrapped around their arms prowling around and looking for a fight. In the center of the street was another Yanukovych supporter with a flag, surrounded by a sea of Yushchenko people trying to argue with him. A handful of the Yushchenko folks were drunk, which made the situation tougher.

There were Tent City security types around to keep the peace, but it looked like the messy end of a good party that too many people got invited to.

When we got to the tents, I asked a few of the guys on guard duty:

So do you count this as final victory?

"Naw," one guy said, "it's not the ultimate victory."

"Well, when will it be then?" I asked.

"That victory we'll celebrate when everything is set down and official."

"What are you saying?" interjected another fellow. "Final victory will come down the line when we feel free and victorious. When the country is on a normal course, only then will we have achieved final victory."

"Well, yeah, that sounds about right," agreed the first.

Yushchenko has just given a ten minute speech to the press. He announced victory.

There are only three quotes that are important from his speech:

"We've done it. This is victory, victory for the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian nation. It took us several hundred years to get here. We have had 14 years of independence, but now... we are free."

The regime of Kuchma, Medvedchuk, and Yanukovych is history."

...

"Now we are going to the people who made this happen. We are going to Maidan. I ask all of you to join us there, thank you."

This article from Reuters has some quotables from throughout the day. My favorite quotable:

"Dear God, let this be the final vote. I'm sure it will be," Kuchma said, suggesting the loser concede within two days.

Another neat little soundbyte:

In Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine's Donbass coalfield, the prime minister's supporters appeared resigned to the prospect of a Yushchenko victory, but unwilling to put up stiff resistance.

"We are still working, just as we were. What do we need? A job, a salary on time, peace. That's it," said Leonid, a city miner. "They need power. They want it. They want only power."

So much for the prospective "Blue Revolution" of Yanukovych supporters against Yushchenko.

While I'm here at Yushchenko headquarters, please check out www.postmodernclog.com for the latest on the mood at Yanukovych's headquarters. Not a lot going on at the moment, but good to get the other side. While we have been here watching Veseli Yaitsya make fun of Yanukovych, Kuchma, Putin, and Lukashenka, the mood at the Yanukovych headquarters has been a bit more... subdued. [update - Discoshaman just got back from the Yanu camp with quotables from Shufrych]

[Explanation: For those of you who don't know, Veseli Yaitsya, which means Happy Eggs, is spoof group that arose in response to Yanukovych's Egg Incident in Ivano-Frakivsk. What happened was that a young man threw an egg at Yanukovych. Yanukovych got hit and fell to the ground, to be rushed to the hospital. He emerged shortly thereafter and, surprise surprise, was unhurt. He claimed it was an assassination attempt for a little while.

However, someone caught the event on tape. Yanukovych got hit, there was a pause of a few seconds, and only then did he fall down. The Yanukovych people tried to salvage the situation, and only made it worse, by claiming there had been something in the egg, like a small rock or a bolt or something.]

The Veseli Yaitsya people just did a new mask spoof of Yanukovych himself, as well as Lukashenka and Putin, which seemed a bit much to me for the Yushchenko campaign headquarters. Maintaining gravitas and all.

But you have to admit, they are Veseli.

The Yushchenko folks have just announced the results of their parallel vote count.

62.16% for Yushchenko
33.35% for Yanukovych

The results represented findings from 63,07 % of all constituencies. (My guess is that they include a slightly disproportionate number of western Ukrainian votes, which would explain the 5% discrepency against exit polls.)

You can go here to see the statistics on voting from the Central Election Committee at 11am and 3pm. (in English)

The site says that participation reached an impressive 77.68% by the close of polls at 8pm. (you can find the information here, but you'll have to be able to read Ukrainian. (there might be some slight changes to this number, since some of the territorial election committees still haven't reported in yet)

If you want to get a kick, click the item on the left entitled: Порівняння голосування 31.10.2004, 21.11.2004, 26.12.2004. This is the breakdown of who is currently winning according to the official CEC count. For this round of the election, they have changed the colors from last time (when Yushchenko got red and Yanukovych blue or green). Now Yushchenko's color is orange on the bar chart. It's a nice touch, even though on other bar charts on the site they still have Yushchenko with the old red. (and the top number in the window is the % of voters accounted for so far, 5.8% last I checked)

Ok, so this is the biggest violent incident I've heard about so far.  According to Obozrevatel, a couple observers in Zaporizhzhya found a bunch of legal violations with some applications for individuals to vote at hem. As soon as they started drawing up the legal paperwork to report the violation they were forcibly ejected from the polling station, then when they tried to drive away, they were shot at. The driver of their car was hit near the heart and has been hopitalized.

Yushchenko's campaign manager Oleksandr Zinchenko just gave a press conference that mostly concerned Yushchenko's plans for the future. Some soundbytes:

• The results of the Yushcheko Campaign's parallel vote count should be released soon.
• About the Prosecutor General's new plans to hold eastern government bodies accountable for threats of secession: He should act in accordance with the law - subject them to political and criminal liablility according to Artical 5 of the constitution.
• In answer to the question when will Yushchenko go out on Maidan, and does he already believe he's won?: He has every reason to believe he won. According to exit polls he's won by a wide margin, and he stated himself that the CEC results to the contrary in round two only stated Yanukovych won due to massive falsification.
• The Orange Revolution will be entered into Ukrainian history and World history. The response from the world community to the events has been fantastic.
• After much waffle and a promise to give his personal opinion as a politician and not as Yushchenko's campaign manager, Zinchenko avoided the question about whether the Constitutional Reform, voted on by opposition deputies as a compromise to allow an Election Reform bill to pass, will actually occur. He instead said he thought the whole Constitution should be altered fundamentally, not just amended, in order to further advance Ukrainian civil society.
• Russia should know that Ukraine no longer fears it, there is no longer any subconscious fear in Ukraine of foreign countries.
  
• What about Yanukovych in the opposition? Zinchenko not sure he will be any sort of leader in the new opposition. But the opposition will include rich, powerful men. Yushchenko and his supporters should not "become drunk on victory" but should prepare themselves for a lot of hard work.
  

Here are the exit poll results (courtesy of Interfax) from
the Center for Social Monitoring:YUSCHENKO - 58.1%, YANUKOVYCH - 38.4%
The Razumkov Center: YUSCHENKO - 56.5%, YANUKOVYCH - 41.3%,
The Interfax-Ukraine Exit Poll: YUSCHENKO - 53%, YANUKOVYCH - 41.3%
The Luntz Research Company at the request of ICTV: Yuschenko - 56%, Yanukovych - 41%

Committee of Voters of Ukraine - Mostly Minor Abnormalities
[An update on the voting situation added onto the CVU bit - Interfax is reporting that the police have recorded NO VIOLENT INCIDENTS by 6pm on voting day! Praise God. This is very good news so long as it doesn't indicate a lot of incidents are just getting shoved under the rug.]

The Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a non-government organization that has been monitoring the elections here has started putting out press releases. You can find its most recent releases here. Many of the violations recorded in the last round of the election were caught by the CVU. In addition to acting as a non-government organization, the CVU is registered as a news organization under the name "Tochka Zoru" (Point of View)

The two press releases posted on the site when I looked describe the following violations: fire set outside a CVU person's home and threats made against his life early this morning, no Yushchenko committee members in Donetsk polling stations, other Yushchenko members not registered, Tochka Zoru journalists not allowed into a couple Dnipropetrovsk polling stations because they are not on the registration log (registration ahead of time on the log was possible but not necessary in the last round, I don't believe this rule has changed), and so on. Most of the stuff seems pretty minor, and there are no items underlined as severe violations.

Ok, so this is weird. Last posting I announced that Obozrevatel said only 21% of voters had voted by 2.40PM. That sounds weird because now Interfax, (which I would pick as the more reliable source if that's what I have to do) has said that 55% had voted by 15:00 on information from 222 of 225 constituencies.

I know there is supposed to be a couple of counts of the numbers of votes throughout the day, one of which i think is at 10 or 11 and one of which may very well happen at 3pm. If so that may explain part of the discrepency.

In any case, I'm going to rely on Interfax more in the future.

I can't find confirmation of any of from-ua's claims against Yushchenko supporters on Obozrevatel.

Articles of note on Obozrevatel: This article states that overall turnout in Ukraine is 21% as of 2:40 PM.

It passes along word from pro-Yushchenko organization Maidan that Yushchenko observers in Luhansk have been threatened by thugs, and journalists have been barred from another station in the city.

New accusations from www.ua.org.ua are that Yushchenko observers on a bus from Kyiv were assaulted by thugs in Donetsk, these may be the buses from Kyiv mentioned on the from-ua site. The number of people voting from home in Mykolayev (where I believe an outrageous 30% voted at home last time) has dropped 100-fold.

SOMETHING TO SCARE YOU: So the Yushchenko people also say lots of Yanukovych observers from Donetsk are not showing up for work in L'viv. This strikes me as particularly scary, because then any Russian observers or various and sundry other Yanukovych people can say lots of falsifications took place at polling stations where Yushchenko is preferred by overwhelming numbers of voters. Then the Yanukovych people take these suits to court and the fact that their observer wasn't there makes it more difficult for Yushchenko's supporters to reject the claims.

Of course, maybe there just aren't many Yanukovych supporters in L'viv so they're really having trouble filling the spots, I sometimes get a little conspiratorial around here.

The Yushchenko people also report much lower voting numbers in Luhansk than last time, a fact which they think may reflect the crackdown on electoral fraud they pushed through.