WORLD
Poroshenko claims landslide victory for pro-western parties in Ukraine elections
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Sunday claimed a landlside victory for pro-western parties in the country's key parliamentary elections.
More than half of the votes went to pro-government parties, and "a constitutional majority" of more than 75 per cent of voters supported the country's course towards Europe, Poroshenko said in a statement.
"The Ukrainian government won a compelling vote of confidence from the people," he said, adding that he will speed up reforms in the crisis-hit country.
And exit poll released after polls closed on Sunday said that the President's newly formed party, the Poroshenko Bloc, stands to get 23 per cent, followed by prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's National Front with 21.3 per cent. The pro-European Samopomich party, led by the mayor of the western city of Lviv, came in third with 13.2 per cent.
The Ukrainian Election Commission said that the turnout stood at 52.9 per cent per cent, based on figures from 115 of the 198 voting districts, the Interfax Ukraine news agency reported.
"I voted for Ukraine - single, indivisible, European," Poroshenko said on Twitter after casting his ballot in Kiev Sunday afternoon.
Earlier, the president showed up dressed in fatigues in a polling station in Kramatorsk, a city in the eastern Donetsk region that was recaptured by government forces in July.
Poroshenko said that he aimed to protect the right to vote of the more than 10,000 soldiers serving in the region.
Observers doubt, however, that a new government - expected to be formed as early as next week - will be able to end the fighting with pro-Russian separatists in the east quickly.