While much of Ukraine is abuzz with campaigning for Sunday’s parliamentary poll, refugees who have fled fighting in the east for Russia say they want nothing to do with the vote.
“Ukrainian elections? What elections?” scoffed Pavel, 46, one of 300 Ukrainians holed up at a Russian holiday camp some 40km from the border near the town of Taganrog.
“How dare the Kiev authorities organise elections when they’re bombing half the country,” he barked.
“I will never, ever vote for those who are trying to kill us.”
Forced across the border by six months of brutal fighting between pro-Russian rebels and Kiev forces, thousands of Ukrainians camped out along the frontier are turning their backs on the election.
Russian-speakers like Pavel say it’s not the Ukrainian poll they’re waiting for but a separatist leadership vote set to be held a week later in the areas in the east of the country under rebel control.
“We’ll vote on November 2 and not a minute sooner,” Pavel said, referring to the date set for elections by the two self-proclaimed rebel republics, which will elect parliaments and leaders.
Many residents in the temporary housing blame Kiev for the turmoil that has forced them - and over 400,000 others - from their homes and claimed some 3,700 lives.
While some seem to have crossed back after rebels firmed up their grip on parts of the region, thousands are still stranded along the border and others have been moved to more permanent housing elsewhere in Russia.
With rebels pledging that no vote organised by Kiev will be held in the territory under their control, almost no-one seem likely to take part in the parliamentary polls.
For those now cut off from their homes, the Ukrainian election seemed to be fuelling fears of fighting instead of bringing hope of peace.
Instead, any faith they had was being placed in the rebel leadership trying to win themselves some sort of legitimacy with the November polls.
As war-weary Ukraine prepares to vote, its former master Russia stands by for once apparently unable to influence the outcome.
But Moscow’s seeming impotence after years of alleged meddling in Ukrainian politics does not mean its policy toward the ex-Soviet state will be swayed by the results.
Nor will it prevent the war in the east, which Russia has been accused of orchestrating, exploding into large scale conflict again after the sporadic fighting of recent days.
“Russia does not really have anyone to support in these elections,” Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the Kremlin-linked Institute for the Commonwealth of Independent States, said.
“There’s no desire to support those who stand a chance of winning and it does not make sense to support those who don’t.”
After a year of bloody upheaval, and six months of war in the east, for which most Ukrainian blame Russia, the Kremlin’s overt support for any party would be seen as a kiss of death.
