Police will act to limit violence, fraud during elections, Avakov says

Ukraine’s National Police and National Guard will maintain
a monopoly of violence during the presidential election campaign in Ukraine,
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in an interview published on Dec. 29 on
Interfax-Ukraine. No civilian patriot groups or thugs will be allowed to employ
violence, he said. “I am warning the public ahead of time – everything will be
fiercely halted,” he said. The police also won’t participate in any election
fraud schemes and will act to stop them, Avakov said. “Even if ‘nets’ and
‘carousels’ are somehow tied to government representatives, that won’t change
anything in our reaction to them,” he said, adding that the police will be
ready for attacks on election commissions and polling stations.

Russia will exercise “colossal interference” in the
presidential campaign, Avakov said in the interview. This will not occur in the
physical form, but in the information sphere, he said. “The British said
recently they found 5,000 Twitter accounts that interfered in elections,” he
said. “I found that funny. We practically have a common information sphere with
Russia, and interference will be colossal by my estimates.” He also said
religious provocations could occur in relation to the launch of the canonical
Orthodox Church of Ukraine. “For example, someone takes over a church
somewhere, burns it and people die, God forbid. And hypothetically, Putin
arrives in a helicopter and begins yelling that people are dying, and the
clergy, and the Russian World. We are not supposed to give them the opportunity
to do that,” he said.

Russia has already begun to interfere in Ukraine’s
election campaign, President Petro Poroshenko said on Dec. 28. “This is the
fifth column that is ready to urgently run and conduct talks on conditions of
capitulation,” he said. Russia is always using information technology to
discredit the Ukrainian and Moldovan governments, he said, referring to
Moldovan parliamentary elections to be held this year. Most EU countries have
felt the effects of these technologies, he said.

Zenon Zawada: We’ve been
following Avakov closely to see whether he’s reached a deal to cooperate with
Poroshenko for the elections. Obviously, he won’t admit to any deal directly
and his actions are more revealing. At this point, Avakov is continuing to
maintain his independence from the president, which also applies to his
political party, the People’s Front. That doesn’t pose a problem for
Poroshenko, who understands the need to use more sophisticated measures – than
the primitive carousels of voters voting more than once – if he’s going to
decide to resort to manipulations to get re-elected.

Some of the state resources at Poroshenko’s disposal
could be threatening to withhold funds from local governments and corporations
if they don’t deliver needed votes. He could use tax authorities to threaten
inspections and fines. He has already been accused of dispatching Security
Service officers to intimidate and interfere with the operations of competing
political parties. And of course, many opportunities for fraud involve the
election commissioners themselves, the largest portion of which were appointed
by the president’s quota (secured by his parliamentary faction.)

Poroshenko’s comments about the Russian fifth
column in the election campaign reveal that he’s already playing the strategy
of positioning himself as the alternative to Russian-oriented forces, which are
embodied by Yuriy Boyko and Viktor Medvedchuk of the Opposition Platform party.
We believe he is collaborating with them to have them serve as the
pseudo-opposition, while truly they are working in tandem behind the scenes to
prevent Yulia Tymoshenko’s election as president. But Russian interference has
been extending far beyond Boyko and Medvedchuk, involving the information,
economic and military fronts. As Avakov pointed out, it could even extend to
the religious front.