“Foreign observers arrived in Donetsk to monitor [the elections of] leaders and lawmakers of the DPR. Among them there are political and public figures from many countries,” the statement said on Saturday.
According to the commission, the observers have arrived from Russia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Greece, Italy, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria and other countries.
Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said that it has launched criminal case over the “organization of illegal elections,” in Donbass. At the same time, the LPR Central Election Commission has delivered accreditations to international election observers ahead of the upcoming vote.
Andreas Maurer, the head of Die Linke party group of the Quakenbruck parliament, said on Saturday that the international representatives do not violate EU laws by observing Sunday’s elections in the DPR and LPR.
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“I asked my lawyers… Neither I, nor my colleagues, nor from Holland, nor from Finland, we do not violate any European or German law,” Maurer said at a press conference.
The German law states that every citizen can visit the places one wants, and express opinions about what have been seen, the politician underlined.
“We have visited, observed… Therefore, according to the legislation of the European Union or Germany, it is impossible to punish us for this. There are 12 notes of protests lying in Germany over my trips to the Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk. Honestly, the German Foreign Ministry is already tired of the Ukrainian ambassador. He always brings them [notes of protest] there, and he always threatens that I will receive some letter from the Prosecutor's Office in Kiev, ” the international observer added.
“Maybe if I was sitting here alone, I would have thought about it. But the fact that my colleagues from Holland, Finland and from other countries, 22 countries, that today received accreditations, shows that there are more and more of us. And I am sure that this process cannot be stopped, ” Maurer noted.
The elections of the heads and members of the parliaments of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk are scheduled for Sunday. The Ukrainian authorities have already stated that they would not recognize the election results. The United States and the European Union have also condemned the vote, arguing that it undermines the commitments taken under the Minsk peace accords, while Russia has said the elections do not contradict the agreements.
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