Ukraine election draws high turnout

Last updated 20:10 25/05/2014

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Early signs pointed to a high turnout in sunny weather in an election where the main candidates, including front-runner Petro Poroshenko, a confectionery magnate, are promising closer ties with the West in defiance of Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

But the absence of over 15 pe cent of the electorate, in Russian-annexed Crimea and two eastern regions where fighting with pro-Moscow rebels continued on Saturday, may mar any result - and leave the Kremlin questioning the victor's legitimacy, for all Putin's new pledge to respect the people's will.

Voting began in most of Ukraine at 8am and will end 12 hours later, when exit polls will indicate a result ahead of an official outcome on Monday.

Only about 20 per cent of the polling stations in the heavily industrialised, Russian-speaking Donetsk region, which has 3.3 million registered voters, were working as of 9.30am, authorities said. None were open in the city of Donetsk.

"These are extremely important elections. We have to make sure Ukraine becomes a truly independent country, a powerful independent state that nobody will be able to push around," said pensioner Mikhailo Belyk, 65, casting his ballot at a crowded polling station in a southeast district of the capital Kiev.

Sounding an equally upbeat note, businessman Viktor Sypchenko, 45, said: "I am voting for my children and their future. I hope we can break free from our awful past."

The picture emerging in the east was more confused. European election monitors have largely pulled out of the Donetsk region for their own safety, citing a campaign of "terror" by pro-Russian separatists against Ukrainian electoral officials.



Others also complained of being prevented from voting, in some cases because ballot papers had not been delivered due to security concerns after at least 20 people were killed in the region during fighting over recent days.

Polls make Poroshenko, known as the "chocolate king" because of his confectionery empire, overwhelming favourite to win Sunday's election. The biggest question is whether he can take over 50 percent to win outright. If not, a run-off vote will be held on June 15.

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His closest, if distant, rival is Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister. She remains a divisive figure to many, more closely linked than Poroshenko with the economic failures and graft that have blighted post-Soviet Ukraine.


As Yanukovich's fiercest rival, Tymoshenko may benefit from the fact that few of the 5 million voters in his eastern power base regions of Donetsk and Luhansk may be able to cast ballots for any of the 21 candidates.

Interim Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk urged Ukrainians to hand the new president a strong mandate to forge closer ties with the European Union and move Ukraine away from a "grey zone of lawlessness and dark forces that dream of suffocating us and into ... a place where it is easier to breathe".

The West has backed the interim government since mass street protests toppled Moscow-backed Yanukovich in February.

But Russia characterised the protests as a "fascist coup". Citing the need to defend Ukraine's large Russian-speaking population, it seized Crimea and backed the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The West hopes that a new leader in Kiev can help resolve a confrontation with Russia that has sparked military buildups east and west of Ukraine and raised fears of a new Cold War.



Two weeks ago, separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions ran referendums they said let them break from Kiev and opened a way to possibly following Crimea into union with Russia - though Moscow denies any plan to seize any more Ukrainian territory.

Opinion polls before the last few months of violence showed disillusion with Kiev's politicians in the east but limited appetite for outright secession.




A territory on a par with France and with 45 million people, Ukraine is the second most populous ex-Soviet state and plays a pivotal role in relations between Russia and the EU.

Large volumes of Russian natural gas flow across it to Germany and other consumers, creating mutual dependencies that complicate diplomatic calculations on all sides of the conflict.

The inheritor of a patchwork of regions ruled not only from Moscow but by Poland, Austria and others, Ukraine's mix of Russian and Ukrainian speakers as well as ethnic minorities have struggled to forge a common national purpose. But polls consistently show a majority in favour of independence.

Since the 2004 "Orange Revolution" that kept Yanukovich from power, Ukrainians of all stripes have been disappointed with a decade of economic drift and graft that won them the dubious distinction of being named Europe's most corrupt country. Their hopes for a fresh start are pinned on Sunday's vote.

Few of the leading candidate are new faces, however.

Both Poroshenko and Tymoshenko played leading roles in the administrations that preceded Yanukovich's defeat of Tymoshenko in the 2010 election. Poroshenko, now a burly 48-year-old, later held a cabinet post for a time under Yanukovich.

Both became wealthy in the anarchic post-Soviet 1990s, Poroshenko, now worth $1.3 billion according to Forbes, through his candy and chocolate empire, Tymoshenko as the "gas princess" involved in the trade and transit of Russian natural gas.

After the Orange Revolution, when he was head of the National Security Council and she prime minister, the two traded accusations of corruption. Tymoshenko, 53, was jailed in 2011 for corrupt gas deals with Russia but was released when Yanukovich was toppled and her record cleared.

- Reuters

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