Election officials at sharp end in separatist Ukraine city

News Manager

Milforums News Bot
By Sabina Zawadzki DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - From a cramped office in residential Donetsk, election officials were frantically working on Sunday to prepare for Ukraine's May 25 presidential poll, despite what they described as intimidation and threats from pro-Russian separatists. "We're not working out of safety concerns," said Volodymyr Klotsky, a member of election commission no. 43, adding that he and his colleagues had reluctantly taken the decision after "terrorists" had seized the offices of another voting commission nearby. Klotsky's commission had been the last of five such election bodies opened up in the eastern Ukrainian city, an industrial hub of about 1 million, which is now the centre of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic. The separatists' revolt, fuelled by heady Russian propaganda, was focused at several points in the east following the overthrow of the Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovich and the annexation by Russia of Crimea.




More...
 
Back
Top