Self-Rule Referendum in Luhansk Attracts Voter Turnout of over 75%

The referendum in Ukraine's southeastern Luhansk region on declaring independence from Kiev has allegedly attracted voter turnout of over 75% in some places.

Vasily Nikitin, representative of the Luhansk referendum press center, told ITAR-TASS Sunday that problems had only been registered in districts where the army had obstructed the organization of the vote,  in the settlements of Svatovo, Melovoye, Belokurakino and Troitskoye.

Representatives of the Central Electoral Commission of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Luhansk informed that voter turnout by 10 am stood at around 22%.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Central Electoral Commission of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk Roman Lyagin announced that the turnout had exceeded 30%  by around 11 am local time.

The ballots in both referendums contain only one question in both Ukrainian and Russian: "Do you support the act of state self-rule of the Donetsk People's Republic/Luhansk People's Republic?"

Polling stations in the two regions are to remain open for 14 hours, according to reports of CNN, with the first results due on Monday.

Pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions organized the vote despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's call to postpone it. The organizers of the referendum have vowed to boycott Ukraine's presidential elections on 25 May.

The EU and US have also condemned the referendums as illegitimate.