“Voting went normally, violations local”, say international observers

Foreign observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the William Howard Taft Republican Institute. Irregularities were observed but were called minor. In the Crimea, for example, one commander filled out the ballots with his men and their were cases of violation of the secrecy of balloting and forcing people to vote a certain way. Observers active in about 500 out of 33,000 polling places have not fixed the number of violations. However, the effectiveness of the observers, most of whom know neither Ukrainian nor Russian.

Foreign observers were critical of the lack of serious political discussion, the lack of mass media access of forces opposed to the government, and changing the election law literally on the eve of elections. Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly observers criticized the cancellation of mayoral elections in Kyiv and Sevastopol, in violation of European Charter of Local Self-Government which Ukraine has signed.