KIEV, Nov. 2 - Pro-Russian rebels elected a separatist leadership in eastern Ukraine on Sunday in a vote President Petro Poroshenko called "a farce,” Reuters reported.

Mining electrician-turned-rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko won over 81 percent of the vote, according to exit polls.

The United States and European Union have already denounced it as illegitimate, but Russia has said it would recognize the result, deepening a crisis that began with the popular overthrow of a Moscow-backed president in February.

Russia said it "respects the will of the people of southeast" Ukraine following elections on Sunday for rebel leadership in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, Interfax reported the foreign ministry as saying.

"The elected representatives received a mandate to solve the practical tasks regarding the restoration of normal life in the regions," Interfax quoted the ministry as saying.

Federica Mogherini, EU's new foreign policy chief, said: "I consider today's 'presidential and parliamentary elections' in Donetsk and Luhansk 'People's Republics' a new obstacle on the path toward peace in Ukraine. The vote is illegal and illegitimate, and the European Union will not recognize it."

Poroshenko said the vote was "a farce, (conducted) under the barrels of tanks and machineguns".

"I hope Russia will not recognize the so-called elections because they are a clear violation of the Sept. 5 Minsk protocol, which was also signed by Russia's representative," he said, referring to an international peace agreement meant to end months of fighting between the separatists and Ukrainian troops.

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 conflict, Russian speakers wary of the new pro-European government in Kiev stood in freezing temperatures to cast their vote, some 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 hours before voting was to begin. Rebels said more artillery was heard in a northern district of Donetsk during the vote.

Ukraine's military said three of its soldiers had been killed in the past 24 hours, two of them by an explosion at a check point near the city of Mariupol, which is under Ukrainian control.

Although sporadically broken, the Sept 5. truce has allowed a semblance of normality to return to Donetsk following violence that has killed more than 4,000 people.

Kiev says the Minsk agreements, signed by rebel leaders and envoys from Kiev, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), arrange for elections held under Ukrainian law that would appoint purely local officials.

But the rebels' plan to elect leaders and institutions in a breakaway territory in the regions of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk violates that agreement, Kiev says. (rt/ez)