News / Europe

Heavy Shelling in Rebel-held Eastern Ukraine After Election

Women clean a garden around a house damaged by recent shelling in the village of Semyonovka near Slovyansk, eastern Ukraine, October 27, 2014.
Women clean a garden around a house damaged by recent shelling in the village of Semyonovka near Slovyansk, eastern Ukraine, October 27, 2014.
VOA News
Heavy shelling rocked the outskirts of the pro-Russian rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine Monday, one day after the country held a parliamentary election.
The Donetsk mayor's office said "powerful firing has been heard from high-caliber guns and explosions." 
Tensions remain high in the area despite a September cease-fire between Kyiv and the pro-Russian separatists.
Nearly three million voters in eastern Ukraine were unable to cast ballots in Sunday's parliamentary elections. 
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko says exit polls show strong support for his push for democratic reforms and for closer ties to the European Union.
Two polls show the Petro Poroshenko Bloc and other pro-Europe parties dominated the elections. Poroshenko thanked voters for backing what he called "a democratic, reformist pro-Ukrainian and pro-European majority."
The exit polls show Poroshenko's bloc with 23 percent of the vote -- a tally substantially short of an outright majority. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's Popular Front followed with 21 percent. 
Despite leading rival parties, 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.
The Self Help Party of western Ukraine was in third place with 13 percent of the vote, while the Opposition Bloc party of ousted Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych was fourth with nearly 8 percent.
Other groups surpassing the 5 percent threshold needed to enter parliament include the Radical Party of firebrand nationalist Oleh Lyashko, the Fatherland party of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the nationalist Svoboda Party. The Communist Party failed to gain entry.
Eastern Ukraine's rebel leaders, who launched a rebellion against the Kyiv government in April, say they will conduct their own polls November 2.
Kyiv and a host of Western governments blame Moscow for backing rebels in the East in a conflict that has killed more than 3,700 people and brought the Ukrainian economy to the brink of collapse.
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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Heavy Shelling in Rebel-held Eastern Ukraine After Election