With Half Of Ballots Counted, Pro-Russian Party Leads In Ukraine
March 27, 2006
Yuliya Tymoshenko during a news conference in Kyiv today (epa)
Yanukovych's Party of Regions is in front, with over 27 percent. That puts the party ahead of two pro-Western groups that
led the country's Orange Revolution: the bloc headed by Yuliya Tymoshenko and President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine.
Yushchenko's office said tonight the president plans to meet with leaders of all of the parties that made it into parliament, including Yanukovich and Tymoshenko before deciding on a possible coalition. Correspondents say the report may dampen hopes among some that the pro-Western parties would quickly unite to form a government.
The European Union, the United States, and the OSCE have praised the vote as meeting democratic standards.
(AP, ITAR-TASS, Interfax)