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Ukraine warns of 'abyss' as rebel east approaches self-rule vote

11 May 2014 04:25 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Ukrainian leader Oleksander Turchinov warned pro-Russian eastern regions they would be stepping into the abyss if they voted for self-rule on Sunday in a referendum that has raised Western fears of a slide to full civil war, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Barricades of tires and scrap metal blocked streets in the port city of Mariupol and in Slaviansk, centers of an uprising that has unleashed the worst crisis between the West and Russia since the Cold War. There was a clash between army and rebels near Slaviansk late on Saturday, but fighting had largely abated.

For a vote on which so much hangs, the referendum in the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, which has declared itself a "People's Republic", seems a decidedly ad hoc affair.

Ballot papers have been printed with no security provision and the meaning of the question - asking voters if they support state 'self-rule' for the People's Republic of Donetsk - is, perhaps deliberately, unclear.

Some see in it endorsement of autonomy within Ukraine, some a move to independence and others a nod to absorption by Russia in the wake of Crimea, which Moscow annexed in March.