KIEV, May 25. /ITAR-TASS/. Voter turnout in Sunday’s snap presidential elections in Ukraine was 38.53% as of 12:00 GMT, the Ukrainian Central Election Commission said.

At the previous presidential elections in Ukraine in 2010, the voter turnout as of 12:00 GMT was more than 45%.

Extremely low voter participation in Trans-Carpathian regions

Voter turnout in Ukraine’s snap presidential elections that are being held on Sunday was 10.35% as of 11:00 a.m. local time (08:00 GMT) in Ukraine’s Trans-Carpathian regions, or almost twice as low as the country’s average, deputy chairperson of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission Zhanna Usenko-Chernaya said.

When asked by Western journalists to comment on this situation, she said it was only preliminary data. She said that there were telephone communication problems with the Trans-Carpathian regions, so it took more time to transmit data.

Meanwhile, the available information about voter turnout in the Trans-Carpathian regions could be compared with the voter turnout in the Black Sea port city of Odessa (12.17%) and the southeastern Lugansk region (8.24%). The biggest turnout was reported from the Kiev region - 23.30%

Ukraine’s average turnout was 17.52% as of 11:00 a.m. local time (08:00 GMT). “The result is better than expected,” Usenko-Chernaya said, adding that these data included not all the regions. “That is why the actual turnover is bigger than those displayed on the sceen,” she said.

The lowest turnover, according to the latest reports, was registered in the southeastern Donetsk region, where only 5.48% of voters took part in the polls.

At the previous presidential elections in Ukraine in 2010, the voter turnout as of 11:00 a.m. local time (08:00 GMT) was 15.31%.