Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include more election results.
Ukraine’s local election saga continued on Nov. 15, with seven cities holding mayoral runoffs.
The second round of voting took place in the regional capitals Odesa, Kherson, Lutsk and Sumy. The eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk; Kamianets-Podilskyi, situated in western Ukraine; and Ukrainka, a town of 15,000 people in Kyiv Oblast, also held votes.
Meanwhile, three weeks after Ukraine held the first round of the nationwide local election on Oct. 25, three regions are still uncalled as results are being contested in court.
The second round of voting in the seven cities saw very low voter turnout — a mere 24%, according to the Central Election Commission.
Runoffs
Not all the runoff results have been announced, forcing observers to sometimes rely on exit polls.
In Odesa, a city of 1 million people located 500 kilometers south of Kyiv, incumbent Mayor Gennady Trukhanov secured re-election, according to the exit poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
The institute said its tally showed Trukhanov easily defeating opponent Mykola Skoryk, a member of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life party. The exit poll showed Trukhanov with 56.7% of the vote and Skoryk with 40.9%.
On Oct. 25, Trukhanov’s local Trust in Deeds party won first place in the city council election, receiving the largest share of the vote, 26%. The Opposition Platform – For Life party came in second with 23% of the vote.
Local anti-corruption activists accuse Trukhanov and his alleged business partners, Alexander Angert and Vladimir Galanternik, of turning Odesa into their private fiefdom, awarding the most lucrative land and municipal contracts to their own companies.
Trukhanov, Angert and Galanternik could not be reached for comment.
Read More: Odesa mayor likely to be re-elected, despite corruption scandals
In other cities, Ukrainian observers are relying on unofficial information from local election commissions and on local exit polls, which aren’t always reliable as they are linked to one of the candidates.
In Kherson, an exit poll conducted by frontrunner Ihor Kolykhaev give him an edge with 67% of the vote. His opponent Volodymyr Saldo has announced that, according to his party’s count, he received over 50% of the vote. However, few hours after Saldo’s statement, the Central Election Commission ruled that Kolykhaev had won the election with 63.5% of the vote.
Kolykhaev is a lawmaker representing the 20-member For the Future faction in parliament. For the Future is connected with oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky through its leader, Kolomoisky’s long-time business partner Ihor Palytsa.
Saldo is a former lawmaker from the pro-Russian Party of Regions, led by ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.
Both Kolykhaev and Saldo were leading their own local parties in the current elections.
For the Future is also set to win in Lutsk, the capital of Volyn Oblast. Its candidate Ihor Polishchuk came first in the first round of voting with 32.5%. According to preliminary results, made public by the Lutsk Election Commission, Polishchuk won the runoff with 54% of the vote.
Polishchuk beat independent candidate Bohdan Shyba, who received 13% of the vote in the first round.
Volyn Oblast has been a stronghold of For the Future, with the party receiving 31% of the vote in the oblast council race.
In Sumy, national parties are competing for the mayor’s seat. In the first round, incumbent Mayor Oleksiy Lysenko, representing the 24-member Batkivshchyna party led by ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, received 44% of the vote.
He was challenged by Vadym Akperov, representing the 27-member European Solidarity party led by ex-President Petro Poroshenko, who received 15% of the vote in the first round. Lysenko has declared himself the winner of the runoff.
In Kamianets-Podilskyi, the Opora election watchdog stated that the local election commission had released preliminary results.
According to them, Mykhailo Posytko, representing the nationalist Svoboda party, received 54% of the vote. In Kramatorsk, independent Oleksandr Honcharenko received 49% of the vote in the first round. He is set to defeat the incumbent Mayor Andriy Pankov, who ran as an independent and received 37% of the vote in the first round.
In Ukrainka, Oleksandr Turenko, representing the European Solidarity party, won the election with 51.5% of the vote, according to the Central Election Commission.
Slow-paced count
Ukrainian local elections are expected to continue for over a month, with the Central Election Commission yet to call three regions. The Commission has also scheduled additional runoffs for Nov. 22, and others are expected to be held on Nov. 29.
The results in Chernivtsi Oblast, the Chernivtsi city council and the city’s mayoral race have been called into question due to alleged fraud. It’s now up to the court to rule on the result.
Read More: Winners & losers of Ukraine’s Oct. 25 local elections
A similar problem arose in Kherson Oblast and Kyiv Oblast, where the opposition parties have alleged fraud and filed complaints.
Additionally, newly-elected mayors of several Ukrainian cities have died from complications of COVID-19, meaning that their seats will be once again contested in January.
For cities where the official results of mayoral races were published by the Central Election Commission later than expected, the runoff is set for Nov. 22.
Runoffs will be held in five regional capitals — Lviv, Rivne, Poltava, Uzhorod and Dnipro — and three cities with over 75,000 residents – Drohobych, Slovyansk and Brovary, a satellite town of Kyiv.
