Putin’s Party Wins Votes In Occupied Ukrainian Regions

Russia has wrapped up widely denounced regional and municipal elections, including in four Eastern regions annexed from Ukraine, delivering strong support for President Vladimir Putin.

The week-long polls, which wrapped up on Sunday, took place amid criticism of vote rigging and Ukraine’s push to reclaim its territories.

The Council of Europe, Europe’s leading rights group, called the polls a flagrant violation of international law, while Kyiv and its allies said they were an illegal attempt to tighten Moscow’s grip over regions in Ukraine’s South and East.

Data published by Moscow and proxy officials showed voters in Ukraine’s war-battered regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson had backed Putin’s United Russia party with more than 70 percent of the ballot in each territory, State-run news agencies reported.

Detailed voting figures were not immediately released.

All but a handful of Russia’s allies recognise the regions as part of Ukraine.

The results mean that Moscow’s handpicked Governors in the territories, a mixture of veteran separatist bosses and small-time local pro-Russian politicians, win full terms in office.

None of the four regions are fully controlled by the Russian Army.

Ukraine, which in June began a gruelling counteroffensive to liberate the lands, has been slowly regaining territory in the Zaporizhia region and has also claimed some advances in Donetsk around the shattered city of Bakhmut.

ALJAZEERA