From a Reuters story on today's voting:
Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the current rebel prime minister whose campaign advertisements are plastered across Donetsk, is almost certain to win the vote for the leadership of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.
Zakharchenko is a 38-year-old former mining electrician who uses earthy language in a heavy local accent. He has compared the region's coal deposits to the oil reserves in the United Arab Emirates and has promised pensioners a stipend that will allow them to go on safari in Australia.
Wearing a dark suit rather than his usual military fatigues, Zakharchenko dropped his vote into a ballot box at a polling station at a local school.
"For justice, happiness, peace and prosperity," he said.
His opponents, two lesser known separatist figures, have rarely appeared in public.
"He doesn't eat, he doesn't sleep. He only works for us 150 percent of the time," said Lyudmila Kovalenko, who works at a school. She said rebel leadership had fixed the windows of the school after it was hit by a mortar.
Just in from TASS:
Some polling stations in the Luhansk People's Republic will remain open until 10 p.m. amid a high voter turnout, the head of the republic's Central Election Commission (CEC), Sergei Kozyakov, said.
"The CEC convened for an emergency session, and a decision was made that those polling stations that so far fail to cope with the flow of people, will remain open until 10 p.m.," he said.
Here is today's situation map of eastern Ukraine by the National Security and Defense Council:
