Criminal case opened in Kryviy Rih mayoral vote

A criminal case was opened on Nov. 16 regarding election fraud in Kryviy Rih, Ukraine’s eighth-largest city, as reported by MP Yegor Firsov of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. The charges allege several election commissioners sold their quotas belonging to their respective parties, without naming them. Kryviy Rih was among 29 Ukrainian cities holding their mayoral runoff elections on Nov. 15, with Yuriy Vilkul of the Opposition Bloc being declared the winner by only a 752-vote margin, or 0.4% of total votes, according to official results. The same day, members of the Self-Reliance party that nominated Yuriy Miloboh, the runner-up in the Kryviy Rih race, demanded results be canceled in those districts where widespread fraud was reported, including ballot-stuffing and carousel voting.

Zenon Zawada: Despite calls for protests of the alleged fraud, not much of a resistance has been launched to overturn the results established by the Central Election Commission. We expect Vilkul to remain as mayor but that’s not the big story here. It’s remarkable that the Kryviy Rih mayoral race was so close between a candidate from the Opposition Bloc (formerly Party of Regions), which used to dominate the region, and the youth-oriented, pro-EU Self-Reliance party. The results reflect the dramatic shift towards Western values that is occurring in southeastern Ukraine.