By Vestnik Kavkaza
On October 26th early parliamentary elections will take place in Ukraine. Experts predict that the new Rada will differ radically from the current parliament. Meanwhile, confrontation between the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and the Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk makes the U.S. interfere in the process, as they don’t want the political forces of Maidan to split apart.
Vladimir Bruter, an expert of the International Institute for Humanitarian and Political Studies, thinks that Poroshenko doesn’t want to see Arseny Yatsenyuk in the prime minister's post: “To settle the situation, Victoria Nuland (an Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of State) has arrived. She managed to figure out the situation to some extent… Today we can speak only about trends, we can’t predict who will take second place.”
Analysts are sure that first place will be taken by Petro Poroshenko's coalition. The question is what results the People’s Front of Yatsenyuk will achieve in the parliamentary elections. Whether Yatsenyuk will stay on as prime minister depends on the result.
“As for Poroshenko’s position, it will be completely formed after the elections. Of course, if Mrs. Nuland puts on pressure aggressively, Poroshenko will have to agree with her, but she would face certain counter-arguments. For example, they would say that the government headed by Yatsenyuk wouldn’t be reliable, as it wouldn’t be supported by the majority of MPs of the Rada,” Bruter believes.
According to him, Poroshenko’s team doesn’t need Yatsenyuk; it will try to compose a more homogeneous government, and Poroshenko is succeeding in this; he fired almost all the people who were appointed by Turchinov and Yatsenyuk after February 21-22. His team would continue the tendency.
Vladimir Zharikhin, the deputy Director of the CIS Countries Institute, thinks that the majority of candidates will be from the main force of Petro Poroshenko's coalition: “It will be his main source. It is interesting whether the People’s Front will get through, what will happen with Freedom. It is notable that at the moment Freedom is returning from all-Ukrainian to regional parties, but this was expected… However, from the point of view of formation of real power structures after the elections, the most important thing is whether Poroshenko will manage to form a parliamentary majority with the involvement of the majority of candidates or whether he will have to build a coalition with other forces.” Zharikhin believes Poroshenko will have many options of partnership for formation of the parliamentary majority.
At the same time, Zharikhin is sure that “Yatsenyuk is dear to the Americans, and they will do their best to maintain him in the Premier’s position. I think there are enough people who have as outstanding skills as Yatsenyuk has; the most important skill for the U.S. is controllability. And there are many such people besides Yatsenyuk.”
