Over 60% Of Donbas Residents Think Have Right To Vote In Ukrainian Election - Poll

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th April, 2019) Over 60 percent of Donbas residents on each side of the contact line between the rival forces in Donbas think that citizens of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics have the right to vote in Ukrainian presidential elections, a poll published on Thursday showed.

The Ukrainian presidential runoff was held on Sunday and resulted in a landslide victory for Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who received 73.22 percent of the vote. Kiev did not organize polling places in those parts of the Donbas region that are not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities, namely the self-proclaimed republics.

"The majority of respondents (62 percent) believed that residents of the territories that are not controlled by [Kiev] have the right to vote in the presidential election in Ukraine, while only 18 percent expressed the opposite opinion," the poll by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation said.

The survey was conducted from March 4-23 among 800 respondents at four checkpoints in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions: Hnutove, Novotroitske, Maiorsk, Stanytsia Luhanska.

The conflict in Donbas started in 2014 when Kiev launched a military operation in the Donbas region after its residents refused to recognize the new government. In February 2015, the warring parties signed the Minsk peace accords to end the hostilities in the region, but the situation has remained tense, with both parties accusing each other of ceasefire violations.