The result wasn’t neat, but it certainly looks decisive:
Pro-Western parties have emerged as the big winners in Ukraine’s parliamentary elections. According to exit polling, the Poroshenko Bloc—controlled by President Petro Poroshenko—earned 23 percent of the vote, while a party aligned with Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk secured 21.3 percent. Both parties favor policies designed to bring Ukraine closer to Europe, and in a statement issued on Saturday Poroshenko said that a parliamentary majority would help him govern more effectively.
“I have enough political will to implement the developed strategy of reforms. But I also need the majority in the Parliament. Reformist majority, not [a] corrupt one. Pro-Ukrainian and pro-European, not pro-Soviet,” he said.
The messy part is that a total of seven parties will sit in Ukraine’s parliament, which seems likely to be just as …rambunctious… as the old parliament — giving Vladimir Putin plenty of Ukrainian domestic cover to wage his war-not-war against the country.
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