Local elections in Ukraine were calm, and the vote counting process has been delayed, says Natalia Nemylivska, chief observer of the International Election Observation Mission of the Ukrainian World Congress.

"Our observers determined that these elections were held calmly, quietly and the general atmosphere was, let's say, positively disposed," Nemilyvska said at the presentation of preliminary report of the UWC International Mission and the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America on the observation of local elections in Ukraine on Wednesday, October 28 in Kyiv.

According to her, 12 representatives of the international mission of the UWC and UCCA from six countries watched the electoral process and the course of voting in Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv regions and Kyiv.

"The vote counting process was assessed by the mission as orderly and transparent, but protracted. In general, the vote counting procedures were followed, despite the shortcomings when not all stages were carried out in the prescribed manner," Nemylivska said.

She reported that observers noticed a number of minor violations during electoral procedures (unsecured ballot boxes, re-sorting of ballots during the counting of votes), but they were not systemic.

Nemylivska also said that among the violations of epidemiological requirements associated with countering COVID-19 were non-observance of social distance during voting, insufficient area of ​​the polling station.

"However, these cases were not systemic," Nemylivska said.

Head of International Election Observation Mission of the Ukrainians World Congress  Borys Wrzesnewskyj called the holding of the presidential poll on election day "some strange precedent" and expressed hope that it will not be repeated.

"We do not believe that the poll influenced the final result of the elections, and we are not sure that the result of the poll, which is likely to be made public, meets the standards of a social survey," Vzhesnevsky said.

Serhiy Kasianchuk, director of the UWC office in Ukraine, said that the mission will give recommendations on changing the electoral legislation in the final report.

"We spend a lot of time on expert work, on work on improving legislation and we would like to give specific recommendations in our final documents, in our final report, how to improve legislation, how to improve the procedure so that the next electoral processes are more transparent, more democratic, taking into account international experience and Ukrainian realities," said Kasianchuk.