Election may set Ukraine on pro-Russia course

UKRAINIANS voted in a parliamentary election yesterday that could tip the divided ex-Soviet republic back toward Russia just 16 months after the Orange Revolution protests helped set it on a Westward course.

An opposition party advocating improved ties with Moscow and a halt to Ukraine’s efforts to join NATO is expected to win the most seats in the 450-member parliament.

Elsewhere yesterday, the EU called on its European partners today to protest at Belarusian violence against demonstrators and the detention of opposition leader Alexander Kozulin.

Mr Kozulin was among up to 100 people detained on Saturday after a series of protest marches against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.

In Ukraine, President Viktor Yushchenko’s job is not at stake, but the vote is the first since constitutional reforms trimmed presidential powers and gave broader authority to parliament, including the right to name the prime minister and much of the Cabinet.

The vote could potentially allow Viktor Yanukovych, who lost the contested 2004 presidential election, to slow the pro-Western course that Yushchenko set and seek improved ties with Moscow.

Yushchenko, who retains the right to set the nation’s foreign policy and appoint the foreign and defence ministers, today pledged that the nation would continue on its Westward path.

“The vote results will have no impact whatsoever on Ukraine’s foreign policy course,” he said after casting his ballot at a Kiev polling station, accompanied by his wife and children.

Amid disillusionment over the sharp slowdown in economic growth, Yushchenko’s party is in the doldrums, while Yanukovych enjoys broad support in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking industrialised east and ties to its powerful tycoons.

Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions is set to secure a comfortable lead with some 30% of the ballot, according to most polls, falling short of a majority needed to form its own Cabinet but enough to become a key force in any future coalition.