On Sunday, Ukraine voted on in legislative polls seen as a test of democracy under President Viktor Yanukovych with jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko forced to watch from the sidelines.
The election for the 450-sear Verkhovna Rada chamber of parliament has also been shaken up by the political emergence of boxing heavyweight star Vitali Klitschko and recently retired football super-striker Andriy Shevchenko.
The ex-Soviet nation of 46 million people – nestled between the European Union and Russia and still undecided about whose alliance it values most – is holding its first vote since Tymoshenko lost to Yanukovych in a bitter contest in 2010.
The firebrand 2004 Orange Revolution leader was jailed less than two years later on abuse of power charges brought by Yanukovych’s Regions Party that both Tymoshenko and Western nations regarded as a vendetta by the president.
Opinion polls suggest that Yanukovych’s alliance with the Communist Party and a top centrist politician will secure a narrow victory over Tymoshenko’s opposition bloc.
But in hot pursuit is the UDAR (Punch) party headed by world boxing champion Klitschko – and a long-mooted alliance with the opposition bloc could swing the parliamentary majority away from the ruling party.
The election for the 450-sear Verkhovna Rada chamber of parliament has also been shaken up by the political emergence of boxing heavyweight star Vitali Klitschko and recently retired football super-striker Andriy Shevchenko.
The ex-Soviet nation of 46 million people – nestled between the European Union and Russia and still undecided about whose alliance it values most – is holding its first vote since Tymoshenko lost to Yanukovych in a bitter contest in 2010.
The firebrand 2004 Orange Revolution leader was jailed less than two years later on abuse of power charges brought by Yanukovych’s Regions Party that both Tymoshenko and Western nations regarded as a vendetta by the president.
Opinion polls suggest that Yanukovych’s alliance with the Communist Party and a top centrist politician will secure a narrow victory over Tymoshenko’s opposition bloc.
But in hot pursuit is the UDAR (Punch) party headed by world boxing champion Klitschko – and a long-mooted alliance with the opposition bloc could swing the parliamentary majority away from the ruling party.