Russia announced Tuesday it will recognize the results of upcoming elections in two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the voting scheduled for November 2 would be important for the “legitimization of power” in the unrecognized “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.
While the rest of Ukraine headed to the polls on Sunday, nearly three million voters were unable to cast ballots in the eastern part of the country, where months of fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 3,700 people.
Eastern Ukraine’s rebel leaders, who launched a rebellion against the Kyiv government in April, said they would conduct their own poll.
President Barack Obama said Monday that the United States will not recognize elections in separatist-controlled areas unless they comply with Ukrainian law and are held with the consent of the Ukrainian government.
In the rest of the country, with almost 85 percent of the votes counted from Sunday’s parliamentary elections, two pro-Europe parties are in the lead.
Ukraine’s Central Election Commission reports Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s Popular Front and the bloc headed by President Petro Poroshenko each have about 22 percent of the vote.
The Self Help Party of western Ukraine was in third place with about 11 percent, while the Opposition Bloc party of ousted Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych was fourth with nearly 10 percent.
Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk both back closer ties with the European Union and both have campaigned for reforms widely seen as needed to pull the country back from the brink of bankruptcy. Coalition talks are set to begin Monday.
Tensions remain high in eastern Ukraine, despite a September cease-fire between Kyiv and the pro-Russian separatists. Heavy shelling Monday rocked the outskirts of the pro-Russian rebel stronghold of Donetsk, but city authorities reported by evening the situation was quiet.
Kyiv and a host of Western governments blame Moscow for backing the rebels.
Russia has rejected the charges, with President Vladimir Putin accusing the West of backing an “anti-constitutional coup d’etat” that toppled the Yanukovych government.
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