Olaf Kießling

On 11 November 2018, the so-called Lugansk People’s Republic, located within the internationally recognised borders of Ukraine, held “elections” to elect a head of the “republic” and members of its “parliament”. The overwhelming majority of the world’s nations does not recognise the sovereignty of the Lugansk People’s Republic, while international institutions such as the OSCE ODIHR considered “elections” there as illegitimate and did not send international election observers there.

On 25 October 2015 local elections took place in Ukraine. The elections were conducted a little over a year since the 2014 snap local elections, which were only held throughout parts of the country. A second round of voting for the election of mayors in cities with more than 90,000 residents where no candidate gained more than 50% of the votes were held on 15 November 2015. Because of the ongoing conflict in East Ukraine and the February 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, local elections were not conducted throughout all of the administrative subdivisions of Ukraine/