亚努科维奇被迫离职，乌克兰东部持续动荡三个月后，乌克兰总统大选已经拉开帷幕。
Voting has begun in Ukraine’s presidential election, three months after Viktor Yanukovych was forced to leave office and amid continuing turmoil in the east of the country.
Kiev hopes the election will serve to unify Ukraine, or at least discourage further polarisation. Twenty-one candidates are standing, with around 35 and a half million people registered to vote at 34 thousand polling stations across the country.
Polls show billionaire sweet-maker and former Foreign Minister, Petro Poroshenko, has a commanding lead but he’s still predicted to be some way short of 50 percent, which he needs to hit if he’s to win in the first round. The nearest challenger is two-time former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. If no one wins in the first round, a run-off will be held on June 15th - and polls suggest Poroshenko would win that contest.
The vote is going ahead despite continuing turmoil in some eastern parts of Ukraine, election officials say there’ve been problems in two eastern states, Donetsk and Luhansk, in getting polling stations up and running. 80 percent of polling stations in Donetsk are reported to be suffering from "technical difficulties", while a central server at the Ukraine election commission has been hit by a virus, according to Russia Today. Votes across the whole country will now be counted manually.
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