KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st March, 2019) The Ukrainian Interior Ministry has revised the number of irregularities reported to the police at this Sunday's presidential election upwards to 1,612 from 1,360 an hour ago.
"As of 18:00 [15:00GMT], investigators have entered 19 complaints into the pre-trial investigation registry. Police have been alerted to 1,612 reports of violations," the ministry said in a Facebook post.
The Interior Ministry's deputy communications chief Viktoria Navrotskaya said earlier there had been 102 reports of campaign silence being broken, 86 attempts to photograph ballots, 29 attempts to buy votes, 22 instances of damage to ballot papers, 15 fake bomb reports, and eight attempts to smuggle ballots out of the polling places.
Ukrainians are choosing among 39 presidential candidates, including current leader Petro Poroshenko, who has been running neck-and-neck in opinion polls with ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been leading the race.
Russia has condemned Ukraine's decision to bar its observers from polling places, which it said undermined the vote's legitimacy and could affect Moscow's decision to accept the outcome. Up to 10 million Ukrainians in Russia and breakaway eastern provinces have been disenfranchised.
