KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st April, 2019) The voters turnout in the first round of the Ukrainian presidential election amounts to 63.48 percent, the Ukrainian Central Election Commission said on Monday after processing data from 198 out of 199 Constituencies.
On Sunday, Ukraine held the first round of the presidential election. According to the first results issued by the Central Election Commission, no candidate managed to get over 50 percent of votes needed for the victory in the first round. After having counted 1.03 percent of ballots, the commission said that comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy was leading in the presidential race with 26.85 percent of votes, while incumbent President Petro Poroshenko was ranking second with 17.55 percent.
However, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is also running for president, claims that, according to the vote count carried out by her team, she comes second with 16.1 percent of votes. She also accused the Security Service of Ukraine of falsifications and provocation during the voting. A similar statement was made by another candidate, leader of the Opposition Platform - For Life party Yuriy Boyko, while Poroshenko said that the election was held in line with the standards of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
For the first time in its history Ukraine denied entrance for Russian observers. Moscow believes that Kiev's move puts in question the legitimacy of the whole election process. Moreover, 7-10 million Ukrainian citizens were not be able to cast ballots over Kiev's refusal to open polling places in Russia and territories of the self-proclaimed people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
