BERLIN – The authorities of Ukraine have just announced their refusal to accredit Germans as observers to the upcoming elections, including many representatives of the political party “Die Linke”. This was revealed this morning, Monday, March 4th, by the head of Die Linke (The Left) party in the Kvakenbrück parliament, Andreas Maurer.

“Accreditation of public and state observers is very tough and slow. There is no support from Ukraine for observers from Germany to take part, ” Maurer said.

According to Maurer, Ukraine fears that among the representatives from Germany, German politicians and social activists with a pro-Russian stance may come to the polls.

On February 28th, a law Ukrainian law banning Russian observers from taking part in elections in Ukraine came into force . The decree was signed by President Petro Poroshenko. From the perspective that Ukraine considers Russia to be an ‘aggressor’ state, this makes sense. However, at the same time, the banning of Russian observers runs contrary to the OSCE rules, to which both Russia and Ukraine are parties to.

Critics charge that Poroshenko wants is a ‘sham’ election that is simply rubber-stamped by the U.S, as the EU grows closer to Russia on the subject of resolving the conflict Ukraine, and a return to normality.

At the same time, Russia has refused to send people in the OSCE mission for security reasons and questioned the transparency of the vote. While the OSCE is nominally neutral, and was established originally after the collapse of the USSR as an organization trumpeted as that which would replace both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, it has instead worked by and large as a wing of the Atlantic Council and NATO, but with nominal Russian representation. Russia has previously been able to establish that the OSCE was embedded with Atlanticist intelligence operates who used the cover of the OSCE to relay information on the positions of the DPR and LPR militias.

Nevertheless, in the OSCE, Kiev was reminded that the refusal to accredit Russians would violate the standards of the organization.

Likewise, this would apply to refusal to allow German representatives as well. In the case of Germany, there is no ‘formal ban’ as there is regarding Russia. However, not providing a method or a responsive liaison tasked with coordinating applications, would effectively mean the same thing.

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On February 21st, the Russian delegation at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly did not allow the adopting of recommendations that would grant countries the ability to refuse election observation to representatives of other states, under the pretext of a conflict of interest. Such was recommendation was proposed by Ukraine and the United States.

The presidential elections in Ukraine are scheduled for March 31, 44 candidates will fight for the highest state post , which is a record number in the country’s modern history.

Critics of the US coup-installed Poroshenko regime, including Ukrainian opposition who are nominally also ‘anti-Russian’, have explained that Poroshenko does not intend to abide by constitutional norms in the upcoming elections. They charge that Poroshenko will use illegal methods to retain power, as he polls presently a very weak 3rd place in objective scientific election polling.

At the end of last year, the US and Ukraine conspired to create an international fiasco in Russia’s Kerch Strait, by entering the Azov Sea without prior authorization. Ukrainian commercial, and sometimes military, ships often enter the Azov Sea after giving prior-notice. Authorization is granted nearly automatically when requested, but such request must be made formally and beforehand.

As a result of the ‘Kerch Strait’ row, Poroshenko instituted Martial Law, and had proposed this for 90 days – which would have carried Ukraine right into the upcoming March elections. Those provisions allowed for the detainment of opposition newspapers and politicians, under the pre-text of national security. Critics have claimed that while Poroshenko was only granted 30 days, which ended last December, he intends to use other means to guarantee that his present 3rd place polling will nevertheless get him into a run-off, after which he will be able to use any number of tactics or provocations to hold onto power, using semi or pseudo-constitutional pretexts.

It should be noted, however that after the 2014 coup, Ukraine’s US installed government began ‘decommunization laws‘, also called ‘lustration’, in 2015. While Russia has not been a part of the now non-existent USSR since its collapse nearly 30 years ago, lustration laws in effect are ‘anti-Russian’ laws, as well as anti-labor laws.

This means that Poroshenko’s latest moves to silence opposition comes on top of these laws – there is now no real ‘left’ opposition in Ukraine, and the opposition that Poroshenko is attempting to silence represents an intra-elite fight over the spoils of what remains of the Ukrainian failed state.