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Election officials at sharp end in separatist Ukraine city

20 May 2014 00:58 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. 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, APA reports quoting Reuters.

By Monday morning, their resolve broken, they had shut down their office.

"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.

Nonetheless, electoral authorities had set up Klotsky and others like him to do their best to prepare for an election that Kiev's pro-Western rulers hope will legitimize government after the street revolt that forced Yanukovich to flee to Russia.

With most of Donetsk's strategic points in separatist hands, this had always been a distant hope in this part of Ukraine. The predicament of Klotsky and his colleagues is further evidence of the separatists' determination to disrupt the election.

Speaking on Sunday before the decision to shut up shop, Klotsky said unknown men had appeared in his office twice in the past two weeks, stealing computers and threatening staff if they did not leave.

"It is the interference of these people, who have grabbed the region by force, who have placed checkpoints around the city to protect it from something. We are worried that either tomorrow, either now, either on election day, they will come and stop our work physically," he said.

Later on Monday Klotsky was out of reach at a police station. It was not clear why.

"We have information on a number of presidents, of vice presidents of electoral commissions being abducted, being maltreated, with implications for a number of other members of the commissions," Ivan Simonovic, U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights said in Kiev in an interview with Reuters on Monday.

"There is intimidation," he said. "A lot of people (in eastern Ukraine) are preparing to leave, not only because of security but because of their social and economic prospects. It may be a big exodus, and it's going to be a major challenge."

Kiev authorities were adamant the election would go ahead despite the difficulties.

"We realize, and are not deceiving anyone about this, that it will be impossible to hold normal elections over the huge territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions," Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Monday, referring also to the neighboring region of Luhansk where separatists also occupy key buildings.

Avakov accused separatists of carrying out "bandit actions" aimed at disrupting the election.

"But elections will take place in Ukraine all the same, despite the wishes of the terrorists to prevent them, even if they are disrupted over several parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions," Avakov told a news conference.