Ukraine’s Central Election Commission has counted 60% of ballots, officially announcing that neither candidate will be able to win most votes in the first round.
"There will be a runoff," Chairperson of the Central Election Commission Tatyana Slipachuk said. The runoff election is scheduled for April 21.
Showman and head of the Servant of the People political party Vladimir Zelensky maintained lead in the Ukrainian presidential race, followed by incumbent President Pyotr Poroshenko and leader the Batkivshchyna party Yulia Tymoshenko with over 55% of ballots counted.
According to the CEC, Zelensky has won 30.25% of the vote, while Poroshenko and Tymoshenko garnered 16.54% and 13.09%, respectively. Yuri Boyko, candidate from the Opposition Platform - For Life, comes fourth with 11.51% of the vote.
The final voter turnout went as high as 63.52%.
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.
More than 7 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, RIA Novosti reported.
Director of the Institute of Political Studies Sergei Markov, speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that there was a typical protest vote in Ukraine yesterday. "It was the none-of-the-above vote, directed against the existing government and its policy. But the paradox is that Poroshenko did not pursue the existing policy, it was the American special services - and they worked closely with Zelensky too, which means that he would not to act against real power. The Ukrainians voted for radical changes, but it turns out that there will be no radical changes, except for one thing: under Zelensky, the Americans will take the policy of elite changing," he said.
"But the country will remain under external control, and the staff officers, which include the intelligence services of the United States, Britain, Canada and Poland, will continue making decisions. There are jokes about Poroshenko, who said that he was against 'collective Putin', which means that at the election, Putin received 80% of the vote. There is some truth in this assertion, because people voted for peace with Russia - but the real power will not change," Sergey Markov emphasized.
According to the expert's forecasts, Zelensky will win in the second round. "90% of those who voted for Tymoshenko and Boyko will vote for Zelensky. They did not vote for Tymoshenko, but against Poroshenko. Poroshenko has one opportunity to break the situation - something like a major terrorist attack or a major military provocation. But as I understand, the Americans didn't give him such permission, as well as for the falsification of the results of the first round," the political scientist said.
The deputy dean of the Faculty of Global Economics and International Affairs of the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University, Andrei Suzdaltsev, agreed with Markov. The results did not come as a surprise, since the electorate, which was dissatisfied with both the political system and the neutral situation, without having its own real leader, voted for Zelensky. It should be borne in mind that Poroshenko’s and Zelensky’s entry into the second round changes accents in some way. It seems that Poroshenko will not accept the defeat, and will try to reduce this gap between them by all means, which is now almost 50%," he said.
At the same time, the outcome of the second round is not so important, because both candidates have the same political players behind their backs. "It must be borne in mind that Zelensky and Poroshenko are Kolomoisky's hands. In this case, all the resources spent on Tymoshenko will now be invested in Zelensky. Russia should expect nothing from these elections. All candidates conduct very tough rhetoric in relation to Russia, Crimea and Donbass. Zelensky said before the elections that not only Crimea will be returned to Ukraine, he will also demand compensation from Russia. So we’ll look at the first steps of Ukraine's new leadership," Andrei Suzdaltsev concluded.
