The 2014 Donbas general elections were held on 2 November 2014 by the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, which were at that time both members of the now defunct Novorossiya confederation.
[1] As a result of a war that started in April of the same year, these internationally unrecognized entities controlled parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in eastern Ukraine, together called the Donbas region.
[5] Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that the election was an important step needed "to legitimize the [DPR and LPR] authorities".
[8] The election commission set up mobile polling stations, allowing DPR fighters, including non-citizens - Russians and other foreigners in their ranks - to vote.
[citation needed] According to an article that appeared in The Guardian, most supporters of a united Ukraine had long since left DPR-controlled territory by the time of the elections.
[11] The article also mentioned that those pro-Ukrainian people who remained in the region were forced to "keep quiet in an atmosphere of fear, in which those suspected of pro-Kyiv sympathies could be arrested or worse."
These were incumbent LPR prime minister Igor Plotnitsky, Oleg Akimov, Larisa Airapetyan, and Viktor Penner.
[14] According to LPR central election commission head Sergei Kozyakov, voter turnout was greater than 60 percent.
[23] According to the text of the Minsk Protocol, local elections in Donbas were meant to be held in early December, in compliance with Ukrainian law.
Five days after signing a follow-up memorandum on the implementation of the Minsk Protocol, DPR and LPR authorities announced that they would hold their own elections in November.
[24] As a representative of Russia signed the Minsk Protocol, some European leaders asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to use his influence to stop the elections in the DPR and LPR.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on 28 October that Russia would recognise the results and that they did not violate the Protocol.
[2] OSCE chairman Didier Burkhalter confirmed that the DPR and LPR elections ran "counter to the letter and spirit of the Minsk Protocol", and said that they would "further complicate its implementation".
Most of these observers were far-right politicians and activists, and were said to come from Russia, Abkhazia, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Israel and the United States.
[26] Another newly created organisation called the "Agency for Security and Cooperation in Europe" (ASCE), and mainly made up of European far-right politicians, travelled to the DPR and LPR to attempt to legitimise the elections.
[27] No monitors from the OSCE were present on election day, and the creation of the similarly named "ASCE" was widely viewed as farcical.