Candidates' car attacked in central Ukraine
Mustafa Nayem says seven unknown assailants attacked his car, carrying him and two other parliamentary candidates, this morning. According to a post on Facebook, the attack took place between the villages of Kazarnya and Subotsi in central Ukraine. He says the night before he had reported a group of "unknown young men" to police.
Nayem, is credited by some as the man who instigated the Euromaidan protests last year. He is vying for a parliamentary seat in the Petro Poroshenko bloc that is expected to win a plurality of the vote.
A candidate vying for a seat in the Rada dressed as Darth Vader was not allowed to cast a ballot, he told journalists.
"I have a passport, I showed it to the members of the electoral commission. To cut it short, they once again did not let me [vote]. It is disappointing. But the fact that I didn't vote does not mean that the new Ukrainian empire will not be built," the candidate with the Internet Party told journalists in Kyiv.
RFE/RL's Carl Schreck reported that 16 Darth Vaders registered for the ballot for the elections.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow says that "as many as 406 voters" cast their ballots by 4 p.m., surpassing the count for the 2011 parliamentary elections.
From RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, Members of the Ukrainian military cast ballots at a polling station in Kramatorsk in the country's parliamentary elections on October 26. In the city of Lviv, soldiers wounded in the conflict in the country's east voted from their hospital rooms, where election workers brought ballot boxes.
Our correspondent Tom Balmforth is in Kyiv, talking to voters:
President Poroshenko has returned to Kyiv to vote, after making a surprise trip to the Donbas region.
"I am voting for our future, for the European direction in Ukraine's development and for government renewal. I am convinced that we will have a new government, a new pro-European coalition and a new parliament," he told reporters, according to Interfax. "I hope I will manage to form a powerful pro-European coalition, a pro-Ukrainian democratic coalition. I do hope that the Ukrainian people will make a very responsible choice today,"
Election returns from polling stations will come in after midnight, said the head of Ukraine's Central Elections Commission.
"I think that starting with midnight or one A.M. we will start receiving reports about the records of the election commissions - first from the smaller polling stations where ballot-counting will end sooner than at medium and large polling stations," CEC Head Mykhailo Okhendovsky said at a briefing in Kyiv, according to Interfax.