East Ukraine gears up for rebel referendum

Sitting around a horseshoe table, half a dozen bouffant-haired ladies work away with scissors and glue on piles of freshly printed fliers promoting Sunday's planned separatist referendum in east Ukraine's Donetsk region.
"We are volunteers and patriots - we are tired of living under the threat of these fascists," said pensioner Galina Gryukanova, waving a pair of scissors.
Despite rejection from Kiev and even an appeal from Russian president Vladimir Putin for the vote to be postponed, preparations have ploughed on for the vote.
Amid an ongoing military operation by the Ukrainian army to oust rebels in the region that has seen pitched battles that have left dozens dead, Sunday's referendum asks people if the industrial region should become independent from Kiev.

The determination to hold the vote dashed hopes of an easing in the crisis despite Putin's surprise call to the rebels to postpone their referendums.
But in spite of the earnest preparations, a vote under the auspices of the masked gunmen who have seized a series of towns across the east will struggle seriously for legitimacy - and risks turning into a farce.

There are deep doubts that the rebels are capable of arranging a ballot for a million voters. And with just a few days to go to polling day, the organisation has appeared amateurish and even chaotic.
In the lobby of the voting commission office in Donetsk - barricaded behind tyres and barbed wire - piles of cardboard boxes crudely sealed up with adhesive tape stood filled with ballots. A hand-written note on them signified which town they were destined for.

"Don't touch," it reads.
Rebel officials though have pledged that the referendum is on track and will be legitimate.
The whole vote has cost just some USD 2,000, all of it on printer ink and paper to produce the ballots and petrol to deliver them, he said.
A total 15,000 volunteers will help run the ballot, Lyagin claimed, and over three million people in Donetsk alone were eligible to vote.