We have previously written about the public phase, launched by the occupiers in April, of the latest tragicomedy surrounding the “State Duma elections,” the finale of which is scheduled for September.
We noted that the collaborators, responsible for executing this “electoral agenda”, recently received some highly noteworthy “Kremlin directives.”
For these “elections,” they are required to fabricate a “voter turnout” of no less than 70%; furthermore, Kremlin handlers are demanding that “United Russia” be credited with “75% of the votes” in the “multi-mandate district,” while simultaneously securing no less than 80% for the “majoritarian candidates.”
While the primary “political news” in occupied Crimea has centered on preparations to usher the current Yalta gauleiter Yanina Pavlenko into the aggressor state’s “parliament” via the “South coast single-mandate district,” the occupiers have adopted a “all quiet in Baghdad” tactic for Sevastopol.
Concurrently, the “Sevastopol” propaganda machine has begun executing a Kremlin directive to demonstrate the “unity of the masses” and “support for the authorities” by heavily publicizing a process with highly predictable results: the “United Russia candidate primaries.”
Given that both of the current “Sevastopol Duma deputies”, Tatiana Lobach and Dmitry Belik, have already been “nominated as candidates,” there is little suspense surrounding their “re-election.”
Prior to the occupation of Sevastopol, Lobach, a native of Khmelnytskyi, served as a deputy in the Balaklava District Council and as an administrator within the local administration there; since 2014, she has been listed as a “deputy of the city legislative assembly” representing “United Russia,” and since 2021, as the aforementioned “duma deputy.” As for Belik, a native of Siberia who arrived in Sevastopol in 1990, he was a key pro-Russian functionary even prior to the occupation.
During the 2012 elections to the Verkhovna Rada, he first struck a backroom deal with the notorious Pavlo Lebedev, and subsequently “backed” Vadym Novynskyi in his bid for a parliamentary seat.
In 2014, Belik actively facilitated the formation of the criminal “city administration” and, for a time, “headed” it; since 2021, much like Lobach, he was named as the “duma deputy.”
Meanwhile, to serve as window dressing, a cast of “technical candidates” for the “primaries”, the occupiers put forward another dozen figures, mostly nobodies such as “university specialists,” cleaners, sheet metal workers, and functionaries from various obscure “enterprises.”
Against this backdrop, the execution by Sevastopol’s “party functionaries” of the Kremlin’s directive to “integrate participants” in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine into the electoral process took on a rather tragicomic quality.
They nominated “police officer” Andrey Kapustinsky and Vyacheslav Muzalevsky, the “assistant commander for legal affairs” of Russia’s military unit 12266, neither of whom had previously been involved in the aggressor’s propaganda machine.
Muzalevsky’s biography helps clarify the goal behind selecting these specific individuals: prior to his “military career,” he had attempted to run a “legal business” in Sevastopol, yet, beyond offering standard “consultations” and “case management”, he also marketed a “full spectrum of detective services” to the public, operating both within the occupied peninsula and across Russia.
Thus, this “headquarters veteran” of the aforementioned 24th motorized rifle regiment, a unit from Volgograd belonging to the aggressor forces, which has been fighting ingloriously in the Kherson sector for the past few years, is of interest to the organizers of these “elections” not for his “tales of heroism,” but specifically for his “detective and legal skills”, such in the same way as his “running mate,” Kapustinsky.
It is highly probable that, following their “defeat in the primaries,” these individuals will be placed on the “party lists of United Russia”, ostensibly “for the sake of veteran representation”, though once again in “unwinnable positions.”
