Ukraine voters embrace peace and West

Ukraine's pro-Western and moderately nationalist parties were on course on Monday to score a major election victory, boosting President Petro Poroshenko's bid to merge his ex-Soviet country with Europe and end a revolt.

A partial count of votes and exit polls showed overwhelming support for Poroshenko's drive to break his nation of 45 million out of Russia's orbit despite the painful economic measures the Kremlin has levied in reprisal.

With 30 percent of precincts reporting, reports showed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's People's Front in a virtual dead heat with the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, each getting about 22 percent of the vote.

"The majority of voters were in favor of the political forces that support the president's peace plan and seek a political solution to the situation in the Donbass," Poroshenko said, referring to the industrialized eastern region where government forces have been fighting separatist rebels.

The six-month-old uprising has killed 3,700 people.

Heavy shelling rocked the outskirts of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Monday, the mayor's office in Donetsk and officials in Kiev said.

"Powerful firing has been heard from high-caliber guns and explosions," the mayor's website said.

Despite a Sept 5 cease-fire between Kiev and separatists, tensions remain high.

Limited autonomy

Parties with links to Moscow, or to the old Viktor Yanukovych government that was ousted after its abrupt rejection in February of a landmark EU pact, were routed at ballot boxes on Sunday.

"I want the war to end and for our country to join the European Union, although I doubt this will happen very soon," pensioner Bogdan Golobutskiy said as he trudged up to a Kiev polling station on Sunday.

Those who rejected Poroshenko's peace deal with the insurgents that gave the separatists limited autonomy also had a poor showing - as did corruption-tainted politicians who had steered Ukraine through two decades of stuttering reforms.

Analysts said it was almost certain that Poroshenko would now have to share power, with Yatsenyuk as premier.

"Voters did not want a monopoly of power in one pair of hands," said Vadym Karasyov of Kiev's Institute of Global Strategies. "They voted for a Poroshenko-Yatsenyuk tandem."

AFP - Reuters

(China Daily 10/28/2014 page12)