DONETSK, May 11, /ITAR-TASS/. Voters in Ukraine’s southeastern Donetsk regions say the referendum is well-organized and is being held in a good atmosphere, an Itar-Tass correspondent reported from Donetsk on Sunday.
People are standing in queues to polling stations. Many are coming with children. People look enthusiastic and openly say that they are voting for the Donetsk People’s Republic in a hope that their choice would bring peaceful life to the future generations.
According to Ksenia Trishkina, the chairman of one of Donetsk’s election commissions, polling stations opened as scheduled but people had been coming since early morning. In her words, no serious violations have been reported during the voting.
Voters say they have no confidence in the current Kiev authorities. “People who came to power with Molotov cocktails, by violence, by burning people alive are not power,” retiree Vasily Petrovich said.
“Such people will bring the country to an abyss.” He said he was confident that the Kiev authorities were engaging servicemen from Ukraine’s western regions to carry out their punitive operation in the east because servicemen of the Donetsk regions were “with their people.”
Tamara Vladimirovna, also a pensioner, noted that it was not ethnic contradictions that had driven Ukraine to the current crisis but rather self-seeking interests of the current political elite and local oligarchs. “The problem is not in nationality, the problem is in money, for which sake people betray their own nation and their state,” she said. “They don’t care whether we are Ukrainian or Russia - they simply seek to set us on to fight.”
“There are no authorities in Ukraine now, usurpers have come to power in an armed coup,” said Roman Manekin, a deputy chairman of a Donetsk election commission.
“The source of power here is the people and it will express its will. Should the West recognize it or not, it is up to the West, not to the Donetsk region.” He noted that Ukrainian media were disseminating false reports about the referendum and polling results trying to detract from its importance for the region.