Efforts by Ukraine’s interim government to disrupt Sunday’s referendum in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk appeared to take center stage in the ongoing military operation against the region, though ultimately do not appear to have significantly hindered voting.
The strategy was most apparent in Krasnoariysk, where National Guard forces rolled into town, seized four public schools used as polling places, and opened fire on a crowd of voters at town hall, killing at least one.
In Mariupol, troops also managed to capture a van full of completed ballots, seizing some 10,000 ballots. With millions of eligible voters and a high turnout, this didn’t put the result in doubt.
Nor, indeed, will the results of the vote, which were roughly 89 percent in favor of the People’s Republic of Donetsk protest leaders, going to change the interim government’s policy of military crackdowns, as they insist the voting was “illegal,” as is the protesting against their rule.
Time to overthrow that unelected stooge running the Ukrainian government. He's killing his own people! Time for regime change!
I wish that Jason Ditz would refrain from calling Kiev junta the "interim government", it implies a degree of legitimacy which they don't deserve.
Once a NAZI always a Nazi!
This is what the United States Government is backing!
Minister Avakov is a war criminal
At least the Ukrainians in the East are voting rather than seizing power by force as did the FACIST JUNTA in Kiev.
yet the seizure of power by force is LAUDED by the JOKERS in the USA and EUROPE and voting for change IS FROWNED ON.
WHAT HYPOCRITES.
It's the "new" Democracy being peddled by the fascists in D.C.. They're more interested in destabilizing the entire world – then they can declare they are the Champions!!
It's the "new" Democracy being peddled by the fascists in D.C.. They're more interested in destabilizing the entire world – then they can declare themselves the Champions!!
If the vote was to be held in Donetsk and Lugansk, what was a van full of ballots doing in Mariupol? By the way, the town is called Krasnoarmiysk and since it's a railway and industrial town, it is just possible that the Russians might be in the majority. Stalin colonised all of the old Soviet Union with Russians to keep the native peoples down and this is exactly the sort of town where they would have been settled.
Perhaps the junta is trying to be inclusive and gain some semblance of legality by killing those that defy them.
Good luck with that. You are only underwriting your own doom in the long run.