Russia TV Showed Ukraine's Right Sector Dmytro Yarosh Led Polls

Right Sector presidential candidate Dmytro Yarosh barely received 1% of the vote in Ukraine’s Sunday election, but Russian TV told Russians he was leading the polls.

From Radio Free Europe:

The video shows Yarosh ahead with 37% of the vote and reporter Irada Zeinalova said the exit polls showed Petro Poroshenko, the actual winner, was ahead with 55%. There were reports the Central Election Commission website was hacked. From Radio Free Europe:

Interfax news agency quoted Ukrainian officials as saying on May 26 the information about Yarosh’s alleged lead “was prepared in advance” by hackers, and was “stored on Russian Internet resources.”

In the end, official preliminary results showed Yarosh far out of the running after receiving slightly above 1 percent of the vote. With votes from more than half of the precincts counted on May 26, Poroshenko was in position to win in the first round, with nearly 54 percent.

This is not a surprise since Russia has used the Right Sector as a boogeyman and scapegoat for Moscow’s claims gthat neo-Nazis lead the new Ukraine government. The Right Sector is notoriously anti-Russia and even encouraged Chechen militant Doku Umarov to fight harder against Russia. In March, Russia’s media regulating body Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI) sent a warning to Lenta.ru over an interview with Yarosh. RAPSI demanded the website not run the interview, but the editor chose to publish it. Editor-in-Chief Galina Timchenko resigned, but employees said she was forced out of the publication. A day later, over 39 people at Lenta.ru resigned in protest of her forced resignation and censorship from Moscow.

The pro-Kremlin channel LifeNews claimed Right Sector was responsible for a deadly shootout in east Ukraine in April because Yarosh’s business card was found at the scene. The story hit Twitter and #YaroshBusinessCard was born.