Separatists in eastern Ukraine voted Sunday in controversial, Russian-backed leadership elections that Kiev and the West have refused to recognize and which threatened to deepen an international crisis over the conflict.

Separatists in eastern Ukraine voted Sunday in controversial, Russian-backed leadership elections that Kiev and the West have refused to recognize and which threatened to deepen an international crisis over the conflict.

The elections in the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic -- based around the two main separatists-held cities -- were billed as bringing a degree of legitimacy to the makeshift military regimes that already control them.

However, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko blasted the election as a violation of an already tattered truce deal signed on September 5, calling them "pseudo-elections that terrorists and bandits want to organize on occupied territory".

Ukrainian authorities announced Saturday the deaths of seven more soldiers and at least six wounded in separatist shelling, which authorities Sunday said was continuing across the conflict zone.

"The election in the Lugansk People's Republic began with the shelling by insurgents of Girskye town," said Gennady Moskal, head of the regional administration, which remains loyal to Kiev. "They fired on the town with Grad (multiple rocket systems)," he said.

According to UN figures, more than 4,000 people have been killed in Ukraine's conflict in the last seven months.