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Ten-year-old Sasha stands in a bomb shelter in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
Ten-year-old Sasha stands in a bomb shelter in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

Live Blog: Ukraine In Crisis (Archive)

Follow all of the latest developments as they happen.

Final News Summary For September 29

-- We have started a new Ukraine Live Blog. Find it here.

-- Ukraine is marking 75 years since the World War II massacre of 33,771 Jews on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Kyiv.

-- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stabilize a fragile cease-fire in Ukraine and do all he could to improve what Merkel called a "catastrophic humanitarian situation" in Syria.

-- Russia's Supreme Court has upheld a decision by a Moscow-backed Crimean court to ban the Mejlis, the self-governing body of Crimean Tatars in the occupied Ukrainian territory.

* NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Kyiv (GMT/UTC +3)

17:54 25.10.2015

Here's an important update on the situation in Mariupol:

The head of the Donetsk Military and Civil Administration, Pavlo Zhebrivskyy, has said at a press briefing that elections in Mariupol won't take place today, according to local news website 0629.com.ua.

"Either the elections in Mariupol will take place on November 15 along with the second round of mayoral elections, or within the next 10 days the Central Electoral Committee will decide to declare the Mariupol elections invalid. Then the Verkhovna Rada [parliament] would have to arrange new elections within 60 days, meaning, they would be held by January," Zhebrivskyy said.

Zhebrivskyy blamed the Central Election Commission for the breakdown of the election process in Mariupol, because it didn't manage the situation with ballot printing properly.

17:29 25.10.2015
People cast their ballot at a polling station in Kyiv earlier today.
People cast their ballot at a polling station in Kyiv earlier today.

Ukraine's Interior Ministry has received 470 reports of procedural violations in today's elections, 54 of which were about bribing voters, according to Deputy Interior Minister Serhiy Yarovyy, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reports.

"In [Kyiv] there were 15 reports about bribing, nine in Poltava Oblast, eight in Zakarpatska Oblast, six in Odesa Oblast, four in Chernihiv Oblast, two in each Donetsk, Kyiv and Cherkasy Oblasts," Yarovyy said.

Yarovyy also said there were two bomb threats at polling stations in the Luhansk and Khmelnytskyy oblasts and there were also reports of voters damaging ballots.

Altogether, 102,000 law enforcement officers are providing security at polling stations across Ukraine.

17:12 25.10.2015
17:12 25.10.2015

Election observers have a special designated area at a polling station in the western city of Rivne.

17:10 25.10.2015

The most common violation of the voting process in Odesa is disregarding the secrecy of the ballot. Such violations have been recorded at almost 9 percent of polling stations, Ukraine's Committee of Voters reports.

This video posted on YouTube shows some Odesa locals seemingly filling in their ballot forms on a window sill, even though the law states that voting may only take place in a voting booth.

17:08 25.10.2015
17:07 25.10.2015

Odesa law-enforcement officers have detained a bus with 34 men and their coordinator for bribing voters, according to the official Twitter account of the Ukrainian police.

17:05 25.10.2015

Voter turnout across Ukraine as of 4 p.m. local time was 36.2 percent, according to the Opora civic network.

The highest turnout is in Ukraine's west (38.1 percent), while the lowest is in the south (32.6 percent).

Polling stations are to close at 8 p.m. local time, which is in about two hours.

16:36 25.10.2015

Election officials at a polling station in Vynohradivskyy District, Zakarpatska Oblast, have done their best to make the place cozy:

16:28 25.10.2015

The head of the Luhansk Military and Civil Administration, Heorhiy Tuka, has shared photos of a polling station in Lisichansk, Luhansk Oblast. According to him, the building is in terrible condition and lacks basic utilities, including heating, toilets, and a kitchen.

"The political mood of the city authorities is irrelevant. But the attitude towards people is beastly," he wrote on Facebook:

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