Ukraine holds presidential vote; rebels block polling stations in east

Long lines snaked around polling stations in Kiev on Sunday for Ukraine's critical presidential election, a stark contrast to the troubled east where heavily armed pro-Russian rebels intimidated voters by smashing ballot boxes and blocking access to voting centers.

The election came three months after the ouster of the country's pro-Russia leader, who was chased from power by months of protests over corruption and his decision to reject a pact with the European Union and instead forge closer ties with Moscow.

There were no immediate signs of clashes on Sunday after weeks of intense battles in a deadly insurgency. But it also appeared little voting was taking place in the east. The regional administration in Donetsk said that only 426 of 2,430 polling stations in the region were open Sunday, and none in the city of Donetsk, which has 1 million people.

Some 35.5 million Ukrainians were eligible to go to the poll, but pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — which have 5.1 million voters — have vowed to stop the vote.

At an open polling station in Krasnoarmiisk, a city in the region of Donetsk, Al Jazeera witnessed few people voting. In days leading up to the election the city had seen threats to voters, the abduction of election commissioners and the destruction of ballot boxes.

The rebels, who have declared the Donetsk and Luhansk regions independent, have pledged not to allow the vote, which they describe as an election in "a neighboring country." They have seized or blocked election offices and intimidated election officials and voters in the regions.

Ukrainian election officials said they have received as little as 26 percent of the election registers for the Donetsk region and 16 percent for the Luhansk region. Ukraine's deputy interior minister, Serhiy Yarovyi, said Saturday that police are ready to ensure order and security at polling stations in just nine of the 34 electoral districts in the east.

In the center of Donetsk, a team of pro-Russian rebels was seen visiting polling stations to make sure they were closed. At one station in a school, Vyacheslav Kucher, 36, tested the front door and turned to his comrades to give the thumbs-up sign after finding it locked.

"I am checking to see everything is normal, to see that there is no nonsense, so this junta doesn't come to power," Kucher said. "We want to make sure nothing is working, because these are illegal authorities and we don't want this outrage."

Outside the Donetsk regional administration building, which has been occupied by government opponents since early April, a group of masked men drove up carrying confiscated ballot boxes and made a show of smashing them in front of a journalist's camera.

One polling station in the city opened in the morning, but minutes later a group of gunmen arrived and forced the election commission out, its chief, Nadia Melnyk, said on Ukraine's Channel 5.

A convoy of an armored personnel carrier and seven trucks carrying several hundred heavily armed men drove through central Donetsk early Sunday afternoon. The gunmen got out of the trucks, stood to attention and gave shots in the air in jubilation as a crowd of several thousand supporters cheered them and chanted: "Heroes!"

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry said that in the village of Artemivka, in the Donetsk region, gunmen stormed the building of a village council hosting a polling station and set it ablaze.

An Italian photojournalist, 30-year old Andrea Rocchelli, was killed Saturday near Slovyansk, the Italian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Rebels said Rocchelli died in mortar shelling by government forces and that his Russian translator also was killed.

Some parts of the Donetsk region remain under greater government control and voting took place in those locations.

In the Azov Sea port of Mariupol, 202 out of 216 polling stations were working, indicating that the situation has been brought under some degree of government control there. Just over a week ago, Rinat Akhmetov, the billionaire metals tycoon who is Ukraine's richest man, had workers from his factories in Mariupol join police to patrol the city and evict pro-Russia insurgents from the government buildings they seized.

"I want order in this country. We can't continue without a president. We need order," voter Gennadiy Menshykov said in Mariupol.

In the town of Krasnoarmeisk, in the west of the Donetsk region, a trickle of people came out to cast their ballots in a local school.

Ivan Sukhostatov, 37, said he had voted for peace in the region.

"We came to show that this whole situation is contrived," he said. "One side are called terrorists, the others get called fascists. But we have no differences between us. We have one faith, we speak one language. We just want there to be peace, for us to finally have a legitimate president and for all this to come to an end."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press. Hoda Abdel-Hamid and John Wendle contributed reporting.