Aleksandr Popov and Andrey Portnov

First vice-chairman of Kievan city state administration Aleksandr Popov, second from the right, and deputy chief of Presidential Administration Andrey Portnov during a meeting with representatives of the Oblast State Administrations of Ukraine, in Kiev, on Thursday, October 21, 2010. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has called for heads of regional state administrations to ensure equal conditions for all participants in the local elections on October 31. "Your task is to create equal conditions for all participants in the electoral process. This is my demand. This will be a test for the government that we will pass successfully," he said at a meeting with heads of regional state administration. At the same time Yanukovich noted that if there were any violations by local government the head of state would respond "in a flash." The president said that the interference of representatives of the government in the electoral process was inadmissible and noted that such cases had already taken place. Photo by Mikhail Markiv / POOL / UNIAN