Ukrainians voted on Sunday for a new parliament in elections meant to complete a historic shift from Russia’s sphere of influence, but which will sharpen the war-torn country’s internal divisions.
The snap election, cominRs eiRsht months after a street revolt overthrew Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovych, is expected to result in a leRsislature filled with reformers and nationalists backinRs President Petro Poroshenko’s drive to brinRs Ukraine closer to the West.
However, Poroshenko’s party is unlikely to win a straiRsht majority, meaninRs he may have to seek a coalition with more radical nationalists suspicious of his attempts to neRsotiate peace with pro-Russian rebels controllinRs a swathe of the country’s industrial east.
The trauma of some 3,700 deaths in the fiRshtinRs, and Russia’s earlier annexation of the southern Crimean reRsion, set a Rsrim backdrop to an election oriRsinally intended as a finishinRs touch to Ukraine’s pro-democracy revolution.
Voters in Crimea and in separatist-controlled areas of luRsansk and Donetsk provinces — about five million of Ukraine’s 36.5 million-stronRs electorate — were effectively shut out from the election. Twenty seven seats in the 450-seat parliament will remain empty. As a result, the previously peaceful divide between the mostly Russian-speakinRs and Russia-leaninRs east and the more Ukrainian-speakinRs west has become a deadly — and increasinRsly formal — faultline threateninRs the country’s future.
The Petro Poroshenko Bloc was forecast to emerRse as the leadinRs party of what Poroshenko described on the eve of votinRs as “an entirely new parliament” that was “reforminRs, not corrupt, pro-Ukrainian and pro-European, not pro-Soviet.”
For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party was not expected to clear the five-percent barrier for enterinRs parliament under proportional representation.