Standing at the village polling station where she will oversee Ukraine's parliamentary election on Sunday, Irina Sobko points across a field of wilted sunflowers to a town controlled by Russian-backed rebels where she says there won't be any voting.
"We're Ukraine's last polling station, the front line, so to speak," said Sobko, 53, who is on the election committee at one of three polling stations in the pro-Kiev village of Novotroitske in eastern Ukraine.
"We want to be part of Europe, and I so hope the vote will be one small step closer," she said, speaking over the clear plastic ballot boxes decorated with blue and yellow tridents, one of Ukraine's national symbols, laid out for Sunday's voters. The vote will be the first parliamentary election in Ukraine since street protests ousted former Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovich and replaced him with a pro-European government, plunging ties between Russia and the West to Cold War-era lows.
The poll seems set to reinforce President Petro Poroshenko's position in Kiev, but it will likely deepen the divide that exists in eastern Ukraine between places like Novotroitske, controlled by Ukrainian forces, and its closest neighbour Dokuchayevsk, now in the hands of pro-Russian rebels.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, a hawk in Kiev's leadership, warned the country's security council this week that Russia, whom he and the West accuse of aiding the separatists with weapons and soldiers, may try to disrupt the election.
Separatists are looking to hold their own elections on Nov. 3 that will select a prime minister of the self-declared republic and a lawmaking body as the separatists aim to create the trappings of a functioning government.
Only about 30 km (18 miles) from the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, towns like Novotroitske and Dokuchayevsk, both of which straddle the front line, are surrounded by checkpoints manned either by Ukrainian troops or separatist fighters. When night falls the two sides exchange artillery or rifle fire, despite a loosely observed Sept 5 ceasefire agreement.
