Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

The United States and European Union have denounced the vote as illegitimate, which is sure to stoke tensions further between the West and Russia.

The separatists' election of a leader and People's Council is the latest twist in a face-off between Russia and the West that started with Ukraine's ouster of a Moscow-backed president in February and the installation of a pro-European leadership.

In Donetsk, eastern Ukraine's former industrial capital and the separatists' political and military stronghold, Soviet music blared out of speakers in front of a central voting station carrying the separatist's red black and blue flag.

Across the region suffering from years of neglect and months of war between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels, people stood in freezing temperatures to cast their vote in some places near the remains of shrapnel from mortar bombings.

"We are citizens of Donetsk, and we don't want to live under the Kiev government that has turned its back on us," said Sergei Kovalenko, 58, a private security guard who came to vote with his wife at a polling station set up at an elementary school.

People brought truck loads of carrots, potatoes and cabbages to polling stations where they were sold off for pennies to those waiting in line.

Some of the heaviest artillery shelling of the past few weeks could be heard in the predominantly Russian-speaking area hours before voting was to begin. Rebels said more artillery was heard in a northern district of Donetsk during the vote.