Ukraine crisis deepens after rebel elections in the east

November 04, 2014 01:37

Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine named a leader of a breakaway republic on Monday after weekend elections which was denounced by Kiev and the West and further deepened a standoff with Russia over the future of the former Soviet state.

Organisers of the vote said that Alexander Zakharchenko, a 38-year-old former mining electrician, had easily won election as head of the "Donetsk People's Republic", an entity proclaimed by armed rebels in the days after they seized key buildings in cities of Ukraine's Russian-speaking east last April.

A rebel representative said Igor Plotnisky had won a majority in a similar election in Luhansk, a smaller self-proclaimed pro-Russian entity further east.

The rogue votes, which Kiev says Russia encouraged, could create a new "frozen conflict" in post-Soviet Europe and further threaten the territorial unity of Ukraine, which lost control of its Crimean peninsula in March when it was annexed by Russia.

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