UCCA Joins International Community in Denouncing Russia's Elections

New York – The Russian Federation held a sham presidential election on March 18, 2018, once again violating the principles of international law, as well as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Illegally staging ballot boxes on the illegally occupied territory of the Crimean peninsula fundamentally violated both the norms and principles of international law, including: the United Nations Charter; the Helsinki Final Act of 1975; UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262 (“On The Territorial Integrity of Ukraine”); UN General Assembly resolutions 71/205 and 72/190; the 1994 Budapest Memorandum; as well as numerous international agreements to which Russia is a signatory.

For these reasons and more, the Russian presidential elections of March 2018, as with the Russian parliamentary elections of September 2016, represent an ongoing and unacceptable violation of international law. The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the largest grassroots representation of Americans of Ukrainian descent, calls on the international community to respond to these violations with sectoral sanctions, cutting Russia off from the international financial system until they reverse course. Furthermore, it would be unacceptable for high-ranking officials of governments and international organizations to attend any FIFA World Cup soccer games in the Russian Federation this summer.

UCCA commends the heroic boycott of Russia’s sham elections by the World Congress of Crimean Tatars (WCCT), who denounced “the so-called ‘elections’ that the invaders are holding, like the very annexation, are illegal, unlawful and immoral.” UCCA re-affirms the words of the WCCT: the annexation of the Crimean Tatar homeland was illegal and unlawful.

UCCA also commends the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) election observation mission, whose report makes clear that the Kremlin’s restrictions on fundamental freedoms, including the detention of activists, resulted in a lack of genuine competition in these sham elections. As Senator John McCain (R-AZ) put it: Russian citizens were denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country's future.

Additional information can be obtained through the UCCA's February and March (2018) bulletins, which are available in English and Ukrainian. 

Source: The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America