Pro-Russian rebels elected a separatist
leadership in eastern Ukraine on Sunday in a vote President Petro Poroshenko
called "a farce".
Mining electrician-turned-rebel leader Alexander
Zakharchenko won over 81 percent of the vote, according to the exit polls of an
election that has worsened a standoff between Russia and the West.
The United States and
European Union have already denounced it as illegitimate, but Russia has said it would recognize the
result, deepening a crisis that began with the popular overthrow of a
Moscow-backed president in February.
Poroshenko said the
vote was "a farce, (conducted) under the barrels of tanks and
machineguns".
"I hope Russia
will not recognize the so-called elections because they are a clear violation
of the Sept. 5 Minsk protocol, which was also signed by Russia's
representative," he said, referring to an international peace agreement
meant to end months of fighting between the separatists and Ukrainian troops.
In Donetsk, eastern
Ukraine's former industrial capital and the separatists' 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 conflict, Russian speakers wary
of the new pro-European government in Kiev stood in freezing temperatures to
cast their vote, some 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 who
came to vote with his wife at a polling station set up at an elementary school.
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 hours before voting was
to begin. Rebels said more artillery was heard in a northern district of
Donetsk during the vote.
Ukraine's military
said three of its soldiers had been killed in the past 24 hours, two of them by
an explosion at a check point near the city of Mariupol, which is under
Ukrainian control.
Although sporadically
broken, the Sept 5. truce has allowed a semblance of normality to return to
Donetsk following violence that has killed more than 4,000 people.
Kiev says the Minsk
agreements, signed by rebel leaders and envoys from Kiev, Russia and the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), arrange for
elections held under Ukrainian law that would appoint purely local officials.
But the rebels' plan
to elect leaders and institutions in a breakaway territory in the regions of
Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk violates that agreement, Kiev says.
CONSOLIDATING
POWER
Early last
week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would recognize the
vote. On Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Russian President
Vladimir Putin the election was illegitimate and would not be recognized by
Europe.
Zakharchenko,
the current rebel prime minister whose campaign advertisements are plastered
across Donetsk, was almost certain to win the vote for the leadership of the
self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.
Using colorful
language in a heavy local accent, Zakharchenko, 38, 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 usual military fatigues, Zakharchenko dropped his vote
into a ballot box at a polling station at a local school: "For justice,
happiness, peace and prosperity".
His opponents,
two lesser known separatist figures, have rarely appeared in public. Public
bulletins of the three candidates made no mention of the policies they endorse,
but rather just listed biographical information.
"He
doesn't eat, he doesn't sleep. He works only for us 150 percent of the
time," said Lyudmila Kovalenko, who works at a school. She said the rebel
leadership had fixed the windows of the school after it was hit by a mortar.
Zakharchenko's
election as rebel leader will mean little by way of change for the region which
is increasingly dependent on Russia for support financially and politically.
"FOR THE
REBELS THEMSELVES"
Rebels say the
election will legitimize the separatist leadership and consolidate power in the
midst of a humanitarian crisis which will only be worsened by the oncoming
winter.
They have
brought in observers from Europe and the Russian-backed regions of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, which broke from the former Soviet republic of Georgia
around the break up of the Soviet Union, as Donetsk and Luhansk did from Ukraine.
An exit poll
monitor, Natalia Samostrokova, 35, said that by noon Zakharchenko was winning
with some "90 percent of the vote and then some" as she scanned the
results of her survey in a voting station in Makiyivka, east of Donetsk.
Enthusiasm for
the rebel cause, which was at its peak in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east
following the ouster of Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovich, waned after violence
closedbanks and
many stores, forcing people out of work.
Voting stations
drew a steady stream of people on Sunday, but many Donetsk residents say the
vote will change nothing and question its validity given there are no voters
lists.
"I don't
see why I should vote. It won't change anything, and besides the election isn't
for the people of Donetsk. It's for the rebels themselves," said Vitaly,
34.
No comments:
Post a Comment