You're reading: Turchynov: vote rigging in favor of Yanukovych was systematic, large-scale

Oleksandr Turchynov, the head of Yulia Tymoshenko's campaign headquarters, has claimed that there was systematic and large-scale vote rigging in the Feb. 7 run-off presidential election in Ukraine.

He said this in a statement released by the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko’s press service on Wednesday.

"I state that the second round of the presidential election in Ukraine was marked by falsifications that significantly affected the election result and threw the result of the vote into question," Turchynov said.

He said that "despite fierce opposition by Viktor Yanukovych’s representatives, Yulia Tymoshenko’s representatives managed to seek the first recount of votes at the 20th election district of the fifth constituency in Kerch," and added that "data submitted to the Central Election Commission from this district gave Yanukovych 8% more votes than he in fact received."

"This fact has been documented. After that, we managed to seek a vote recount at another six election districts. In all cases of the vote recount, we saw similar falsification in favor of Yanukovych."

Similar violations, according to Tymoshenko’s headquarters, were recorded in other Ukrainian regions, in particular, in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

"I’m empowered to report the first legally proved facts of vote rigging in favor of Yanukovych in the second round of the presidential election in Ukraine," Turchynov said, adding that he is ready to provide the evidence to international observers, reporters, the public and the courts.

He also said that Tymoshenko’s campaign headquarters had submitted the documents to the Central Election Commission and demanded that votes be recounted at over 900 polling stations.