You're reading: At least 10,000 anti-terrorist operation soldiers to be able to vote in parliamentary elections

Up to 10,000 servicemen participating in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in eastern Ukraine will be able to vote in early elections for the Verkhovna Rada, Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak has said.

“What we managed to do is that we included [servicemen] in the voters’ register, and up to 10,000 servicemen will be able to vote. The remaining part of personnel won’t have such an opportunity,” he said at a meeting involving Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, international and Ukrainian observers in Kyiv on Thursday, Oct. 23.

Poltorak also said that a number of soldiers had filed lawsuits “so that their right to vote could be recognized.”

He noted that he supports such actions of personnel.

It was reported earlier that the Verkhovna Rada had failed to put bills on ensuring the proper organization of the voting process proposed by Davyd Zhvania and on enforcing the constitutional voting rights of the antiterrorist operation participants in the parliamentary elections on Oct. 27, 2014 proposed by Leonid Yemets on the Oct. 20 parliamentary session agenda.

Turchynov proposed twice that the parliamentarians vote for putting Zhvania’s bill and five times for putting Yemets’ bill on the parliamentary session’s agenda, but these proposals never garnered the necessary minimum of 226 votes.

Yemets’ bill would enable those taking part in the antiterrorist operation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to cast their ballots at their current location rather than at the place of their residence.

Zhvania’s bill would not only entitle servicemen to vote at their current location in the antiterrorist operation area but would also tighten security measures at the polling stations and during the transportation of ballots and other election documents. The bill had been previously cleared with the Central Elections Commission.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said it was “immoral for the people’s deputies to deprive the best sons of Ukraine, Ukrainian warriors, of their constitutional right to elect their government. They deserve this more than anyone else.”

Ruslan Kniazevych, the presidential representative at the Verkhovna Rada, said the same evening that servicemen involved in the operation could be enabled to vote in the elections in an extra-parliamentary way.

On Tuesday, Poroshenko instructed the chiefs of the Defense Ministry and the other law enforcement and security agencies to collect applications from servicemen wishing to vote and put them on the voter register in the Oct. 26 parliamentary elections. He announced also that 10,000 out of the 25,000 servicemen deployed in the operation area in eastern Ukraine had already been put on the voter lists.

Early parliamentary elections in Ukraine are scheduled for Oct. 26, 2014.