Live Blog: Parliamentary Elections In Ukraine

Traditionally, many of those running nominally as independents in the single-mandate districts end up supporting the ruling party. Those districts were abandoned after the 2004 Orange Revolution -- but reinstated with legislation initiated by the Party of Regions in 2011.

And as Elena Gnedina, an analyst with a London-based risk consultancy, explains, this gives the ruling party an advantage.

"There will be 225 deputies elected [in single-mandate districts, many of them] as independents, and many are afraid these people will join with the Party of Regions and the Communist Party and build a strong faction in the parliament. This is quite possible and this has happened before in Ukraine. In the 1998 and 2002 elections that is what decidedly happened," Gnedina says.

"Considering the abuse of power and the excessive role of money in this election, democratic progress appears to have reversed in Ukraine."

"The October 28 parliamentary elections were characterized by the lack of a level playing field, caused primarily by abuse of administrative resources, a lack of transparency of campaign and party financing, and a lack of balanced media coverage."

"Ukraine stepped backward by excluding hundreds of candidates for technical reasons, not to mention the very unfair exclusion of [jailed opposition leaders] Mrs. [Yulia] Tymoshenko and Mr. [Yuriy] Lutsenko."