Eastern Ukraine polls take region closer to Russia
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PRO-RUSSIAN rebels voted in an election to set up a separatist leadership in eastern Ukraine yesterday, taking the war-torn region closer to Russia and defying Kiev and the West, as shelling continued across the territory.
The United States and European Union have denounced the vote as illegitimate, which is sure to stoke tensions further between the West and Russia.
The election of a leader and People’s Council is the latest twist in a face-off between Russia and the West that started with Ukraine’s ouster of a Moscow-backed president in February and the installation of a pro-European leadership.
In Donetsk, eastern Ukraine’s former industrial capital and the rebels’ political and military stronghold, Soviet music blared out of speakers in front of a central voting station carrying the separatist’s red black and blue flag.
Across the region suffering from years of neglect and months of war between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels, people stood in freezing temperatures to cast their vote in some places near the remains of shrapnel from mortar bombings.
“We are citizens of Donetsk, and we don’t want to live under the Kiev government that has turned its back on us,” said Sergei Kovalenko, 58, a private security guard voted with his wife at a polling stationl.
People brought truck loads of carrots, potatoes and cabbages to polling stations where they were sold off for pennies to those waiting in line.
Some of the heaviest artillery shelling of the past few weeks could be heard in the predominantly Russian-speaking area hours before voting was to begin. Rebels said more artillery was heard in a northern district of Donetsk during the vote.
Kiev says the vote in its Donetsk and Luhansk regions violates a series of agreements known as the Minsk protocol that underpins a September 5 ceasefire between the rebels and Kiev.
Although sporadically broken, the truce has allowed a semblance of normality to return to Donetsk following violence that has killed over 4,000 people in the region.
The poll will further strain relations between the West and Russia after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would recognise the vote. On Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Russian President Vladimir Putin the election was illegitimate and would not be recognized by Europe.
Alexander Zakharchenko, the current rebel prime minister whose campaign advertisements are seen across Donetsk, is almost certain to win the vote for the leadership of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
A 38-year-old former mining electrician who uses colorful language in a heavy local accent, Zakharchenko has compared the region’s coal deposits to the oil reserves in the United Arab Emirates and has promised pensioners a stipend that will allow them to go on safari in Australia.
Wearing a dark suit rather than his military fatigues, Zakharchenko voted at a polling station at a local school.
“For justice, happiness, peace and prosperity,” he said.
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