Pro-Russian separatists controlling swathes of east Ukraine are set to hold leadership polls on Sunday that Moscow has backed despite condemnation from Kiev and the West.
While insurgent leaders hope the first elections in their "republics" will show they have popular support, Ukraine and the West fear the ballot is being staged to drag the Russian-speaking industrial east further from the grip of Kiev's pro-Western government.
"The elections will allow us to build a legitimate government," said rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko, the self-appointed prime minister of the separatist Donetsk People's Republic.
Like his counterpart in neighbouring breakaway region Lugansk, Igor Plotnitsky, Zakharchenko is favourite to win the election in the fiefdom his armed fighters control.
Since the start of a pro-Russian rebellion in April, the coal-mining Donetsk and Lugansk regions have been roiled by a brutal conflict that has seen over 3,700 killed by fighting between Kiev and separatist forces.
The vote has driven yet another wedge between Russia on one side and Kiev and the West on the other -- already eyeball-to-eyeball over claims that Moscow has fuelled the conflict and sent troops across the border.
The Russian government expects "the elections will go ahead as agreed" and will "of course recognise the results," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week.
"We are counting on it being a free vote and that it will go ahead unhindered," he told Russian newspaper Izvestiya