YANGON: Myanmar’s junta said Monday that long-promised elections will start on December 28, despite a raging civil war that has put much of the country out of its control, and international monitors slating the poll as a charade.
Myanmar has been consumed by conflict since the military deposed the government of democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, making unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud.
Swathes of the country are beyond military control — administered by a myriad of pro-democracy guerrillas and powerful ethnic armed organizations which have pledged to block polls in their enclaves.
“The first phase of the multi-party democratic general election for each parliament will begin on Sunday 28 December 2025,” Myanmar’s Union Election Commission said in a statement.
“Dates for the subsequent phases will be announced later,” the statement added.
Myanmar’s civil war has killed thousands, left more than half the nation in poverty, and more than 3.5 million people living displaced.
The junta has touted elections as a way to end the conflict and offered cash rewards to opposition fighters willing to lay down their arms ahead of the vote.
However Suu Kyi remains jailed, while many opposition lawmakers ousted by the coup are boycotting it and a UN expert has branded the vote a “fraud” designed to rebrand continuing military rule.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is currently ruling Myanmar as acting president, also serving as the chief of the armed forces which has ruled the country for most of its post-independence history.
Analysts say the election will likely see Min Aung Hlaing maintain his power over any new government.
Meanhile, they say, the vote may cause further splits in already fractious array of opposition groups as they weigh whether to participate in the poll.
A census held last year as preparation for the election estimated it failed to collect data from 19 million of the country’s 51 million people, provisional results said.
The results cited “significant security constraints” as one reason for the shortfall — giving a sign of how limited the reach of the election may be amid the civil war.
Myanmar junta sets December 28 poll date despite raging civil war
https://arab.news/cnpz7
Myanmar junta sets December 28 poll date despite raging civil war
- Myanmar has been consumed by conflict since the military deposed the government of democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, making unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud
No sign of progress on first day of Ukraine war talks in Geneva
- Two previous rounds of negotiation between Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi failed to yield a breakthrough
- Trump put pressure on Ukraine to make a deal, saying they “better come to the table, fast”
GENEVA: Ukrainian and Russian negotiators concluded the first of two days of US-mediated peace talks in Geneva on Tuesday, though neither side signalled they were any closer to ending Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
Negotiations will resume on Wednesday.
The United States has been pushing for an end to the nearly four-year war, but has failed to broker a compromise between Moscow and Kyiv on the key issue of territory.
Two previous rounds of negotiation between the two sides in Abu Dhabi failed to yield a breakthrough.
The latest talks “were very tense,” said a source close to the Russian delegation.
“They lasted six hours. They have now concluded,” the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address he was ready “to move quickly toward a worthy agreement to end the war,” but questioned whether Russia was serious about peace.
“What do they want?” he added, accusing them of prioritising missile strikes over “real diplomacy.”
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The ensuing conflict has resulted in a tidal wave of destruction that has left entire cities in ruins, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead and forced millions of people to flee their homes.
- ‘Come to the table, fast’ -
Zelensky has repeatedly said his country is being asked to make disproportionate compromises compared to Russia.
US President Donald Trump on Monday put pressure on Ukraine to make a deal, saying they “better come to the table, fast.”
Russia occupies around one-fifth of Ukraine — including the Crimean peninsula it seized in 2014 — and areas that Moscow-backed separatists had taken prior to the 2022 invasion.
It is pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region as part of any deal, and has threatened to take it by force if talks fail.
But Kyiv has rejected this deeply unpopular demand, which would be politically and militarily fraught, and signalled it will not sign a deal without security guarantees that deter Russia from invading again.
Russia has been slowly capturing territory across the sprawling front line for months.
But its war-time economic worries are mounting, with growth stagnating and a ballooning budget deficit as oil revenues — choked by sanctions — drop to a five-year low.
Ukrainian forces recently made their fastest gains in two-and-a-half years, recapturing 201 square kilometers (78 square miles) last week, according to an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War.
That total includes areas Kyiv and military analysts say are controlled by Russia (72 square kilometers), as well as those claimed by Moscow’s army (129 square kilometers).
The counterattacks likely leveraged the disruption of Russian forces’ access to Starlink, the ISW said, after the satellite Internet firm’s boss, Elon Musk, announced “measures” to end Russia’s use of the technology.
- Breakthrough hopes low -
For the talks in Geneva, the Kremlin reinstated nationalist hawk and former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky as its lead negotiator.
Ukrainian national security secretary Rustem Umerov was leading Kyiv’s side.
Hopes for a breakthrough are low.
Even before the talks were underway, Ukraine accused Russia of undermining peace efforts by launching 29 missiles and 396 drones in a series of attacks overnight that authorities said killed at least four people, wounded others and cut power to tens of thousands in southern Ukraine.
“The extent to which Russia disregards peace efforts: a massive missile and drone strike against Ukraine right before the next round of talks in Geneva,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote on social media.
A Russian drone strike killed three staff of a power plant in the frontline town of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, according to energy minister Denys Shmygal.
Another person was killed in the northeastern Sumy region, local officials said.
Russia meanwhile accused Ukraine of launching more than 150 drones overnight, mainly over southern regions and the Crimean peninsula — occupied by the Kremlin in 2014.
An oil depot in southern Russia caught fire, according to officials.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists to expect no major news from the first day of talks.
