Some 11Mln Ukraine Voters Have Not Cast Ballots in Presidential Vote - CEC

KIEV (Sputnik) – A total of 10.804 million Ukrainian citizens have not cast ballots during the first round of the presidential election, the country’s Central Election Commission said on Monday.

According to the commission, 29.622 million Ukrainian citizens had a right to vote, while the number of people, who cast ballots, amounts to 18.817 million.

On Sunday, Ukraine held the first round of the presidential election. According to the current results issued by the Central Election Commission, no candidate managed to get over 50 percent of votes needed for the victory in the first round.

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After having counted 35.47 percent of ballots, the commission said that comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy was leading in the presidential race with 30.22 percent of votes, while incumbent President Petro Poroshenko was ranking second with 16.69 percent. Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko comes third with 13.14 percent of votes.

The Central Election Commission said that no serious violations had been registered during the voting, while the Interior Ministry said it had recorded more than 2,100 reports about violations in the election process and opened 39 criminal cases as of 19:00 GMT Sunday.

For the first time in its history Ukraine denied entrance for Russian observers. Moscow believes that Kiev’s move puts in question the legitimacy of the whole election process.

Moreover, 7-10 million Ukrainian citizens were not able to cast ballots over Kiev’s refusal to open polling places in Russia and territories of the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.