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 Sunday's vote, the climax of a six-month separatist rebellion in
Ukraine's industrialised east, took place in defiance of Kiev's
pro-Western authorities and was certain to worsen the standoff
between Russia and the West over the future of the ex-Soviet
republic.
"The central election commission deems Alexander Zakharchenko to be
the elected head of the Donetsk People's Republic," an election
official, Roman Lyagin, told journalists in Donetsk, the
separatists' political and military stronghold in eastern Ukraine.
Zakharchenko, 38, a mining electrician-turned-rebel leader, had
received 765,340 votes, Lyagin said, which appeared to represent 79
percent of the vote.
 Ukraine's pro-Western president, Petro Poroshenko, denounced the
vote on Sunday night as a "farce (conducted) under the barrels of
tanks and machine guns". He said it violated a Sept. 5 agreement
reached in the Belarussian capital, Minsk, which had also been
signed by Russia.
The United States and the European Union also denounced the vote as
illegitimate and in contradiction of the Minsk protocol. Attention
will now focus on the Kremlin and how Russian President Vladimir
Putin will react to the vote.
He has been urged by European leaders, including German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, not to recognise the validity of the election though
his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, suggested last week that Moscow
would.
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The vote deepens a geo-political crisis that began with the popular
overthrow of a Moscow-backed president in Kiev last February by
street protests, sparking Russia's annexation of the Crimean
peninsula the following month.
Russia went on to back the separatist revolt in the east, leading to
a conflict in which more than 4,000 people have been killed.
A Sept. 5 ceasefire has brought an end to full-scale clashes between
government forces and the Russian-backed separatists, though
sporadic shelling particularly in the airport area of Donetsk,
continues to exert pressure on the truce.
Artillery fire was heard in the direction of the airport hours after
the polling stations closed on Sunday night, but Monday was
generally quiet in the city center.
(Reporting by Thomas Grove; Writing by Richard Balmforth; editing by
Janet McBride)
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