The mayors of 358 cities and the heads of about 10,000 small towns and villages will be elected through the direct vote.
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Local elections in Ukraine’s city of Mariupol, a key site on the line separating Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists, were disrupted Sunday after a local commission rejected paper ballots as incorrect.
However, resentment and disappointment was high among the electorate and elections were not held in parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia-backed rebels.
The Interior Ministry of Ukraine has received over 340 notifications of violations during local elections in Ukraine, the ministry said Sunday.
“Mariupol residents, mostly retirees, who want to cast their votes come to the polling stations”.
The situation in Mariupol, a major port and steel city, is especially fraught.
“We clearly see in Mariupol the battle between forces for Akhmetov and forces against Akhmetov”, said political analyst Oleksandr Solontai.
Local election officials said they rejected the Mariupol ballots because they weren’t made correctly at the local printing office., identified as Pryazovsky Robochy.
Poroshenko ordered the national parliament and central elections commission to make sure the election is held soon.
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Russian Federation and Ukraine share both a long history and a fierce animosity sparked by months of winter 2013-2014 protests that ousted Kremlin-president Viktor Poroshenko and brought a strongly pro-Western leadership to power. A September poll by the worldwide Republican Institute showed that two thirds of the population was frustrated by the pace of reform and more than half disapproved of the government.
