MOSCOW – The two pro-Russian separatist entities in eastern Ukraine voted on Sunday to elect leaders and parliamentary assemblies.
A report from Moscow said the self-declared “People’s Republics’’ of Donetsk and Luhansk are staging the polls in spite of the ongoing figh in some of the territories they control.
However, Russia government said the elections would increase the separatist leaderships’ legitimacy.
Russia is the only country that has publicly promised to recognise them while European Union and the U.S have called the votes illegitimate.
Also, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, described the election as “pseudo-elections’’ that defy a Sept. 5 agreement signed by the separatists and Ukraine.
The major candidates in the votes are the current separatist leaders, Alexander Zakharchenko in Donetsk and Igor Plotnitsky in Luhansk.
Both are running against relatively obscure candidates who are not expected to garner many votes.
The separatists said that voting would be possible for everyone inside their territories, including volunteer fighters from Russia and other countries.
Donetsk elections Chief Roman Lyagin said that more than three million ballots were printed, while his Luhansk counterpart, Sergei Kozyakov, spoke of one million ballots. (dpa/NAN)