Ukraine Rebels Hold Russia-Backed Polls Condemned by UN

Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine are holding elections today in their self-proclaimed peoples republics in defiance of the United Nations and governments from Kiev to Washington.

Voters in rebel-held territory in Donetsk and Luhansk will each select a head of government as well as a Peoples Council, according to their websites. Voting booths will open at 8 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Both regions switched to Moscow time, one hour later than the rest of Ukraine, on Oct. 26.

About 5.2 million people live in the conflict zones, according to the United Nations. About 4.3 million and 2.2 million people, mainly Russian speakers, lived in Donetsk and Luhansk, respectively, before the uprising began. Seven months of fighting has displaced almost 1 million people and claimed more than 4,000 lives, the UN says.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplores the elections as a breach of the constitution and national law, according to the UNs website. These elections will seriously undermine the Minsk protocol and memorandum, which need to be urgently implemented in full.

Fighting has continued almost daily since the belligerents agreed to a cease-fire in the capital of Belarus on Sept 5. Seven government soldiers were killed and 16 were wounded by rebel fire yesterday, according to the Defense Ministry. That pushed the death toll for Ukrainian soldiers to almost 1,000, military spokesman Volodomyr Polevyi said in a video briefing.

Russia is alone in saying it will accept the results of the elections in rebel-held territory in Donetsk and Luhansk, which boycotted national parliamentary elections on Oct. 26.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is calling on his party to support keeping Arseniy Yatsenyuk, 40, as the countrys youngest prime minister, saying Oct. 31 the country needs to be united as never before. Yatsenyuks Peoples Front edged the Poroshenko Bloc by 22.2 percent to 21.8 percent of the party-list vote that makes up half of parliament.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told Russias RBK television that todays polls in Donetsk and Luhansk will create problems that can never be solved, according to a video of the interview posted on YouTube. The situation will deteriorate no matter what anyone says.

Current separatist leaders Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitskiy are seeking to legitimize the roles they assumed at the start of the rebellion, which was triggered by the ouster of Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych in February and Russias annexation of Crimea in March.

Zakharchenko, 38, is one of three candidates running for the top job in the Donetsk Peoples Republic. He was educated as an electrician and worked as a miner before graduating from the Donetsk police academy and then starting his own business, according a biography posted on the local election commissions website. He led the group of protesters who seized the local government building on April 16 and later took part in many important battles, according to the biography.

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Ukraine Rebels Hold Russia-Backed Polls Condemned by UN