How should the results of the 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine be interpreted?
As soon as President Yanukovych escaped to Russia in February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament scheduled preterm presidential elections for May 25, 2014. The leaders of the EuroMaidan Revolution hoped that the snap elections would legitimize their victory and unify the country, a task that became even more urgent during the three months before the elections, when Russia annexed the Crimea and fighting in the Donbas broke out.
With the Party of Regions in disarray, the EuroMaidan forces did not face any significant opposition. Early polls indicated three prominent politicians from the same camp emerging as the main contenders: the chocolate tycoon and long-time opposition supporter Petro Poroshenko; Yulia Tymoshenko, fresh out of prison and eager to regain political ground; and the retired heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, a Russian-speaking democratic reformer with no ties to the old regime, who was seen by many as a long-awaited third force in Ukrainian politics. However, Klitschko soon withdrew from the race and endorsed Poroshenko after revelations emerged that he had a German residence permit, thus disqualifying him from the presidency. Perhaps more important, Klitschko offered Poroshenko, who did not have his own political machine, the support of his party, the aptly named Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform, or UDAR, which means “punch” in Ukrainian. Klitschko instead stood in Kyiv's mayoral elections, which he won easily. After concluding this alliance, Poroshenko took a clear lead in the polls all the way to the elections.
On election night, May 25, 2014, Poroshenko won in the first round with 54.7 percent of the vote. With the war in the Donbas on their minds, voters likely wanted to put a commander-in-chief in place as soon as possible, without going into a runoff. Poroshenko also appeared more moderate and thus more acceptable to the proRussian forces in the Donbas than Tymoshenko, who ended up a distant second with only 12.81 percent.
Voting did not take place in the Crimea, or in most of the Donbas region, thus further diminishing the chances of the Party of Regions; amidst internal turmoil and the expulsion of several popular politicians, the party's nomination went to the former governor of Kharkiv, Mykhailo Dobkin, who scored a meager 3.03 percent. On the other hand, radical Ukrainian nationalists did not do well either: Oleh Tyahnybok, head of the Freedom Party, received 1.16 percent of the vote and Dmytro Yarosh of Right Sector a paltry 0.70 percent.Russia initially called the preterm presidential elections illegitimate but in the end changed its position and recognized the outcome. The threat of escalating Western sanctions was a major factor behind this reversal, but the Kremlin was also interested in a dialogue with Kyiv, admittedly from a position of power, that could help achieve Russian aims in the Donbas without accepting financial responsibility for the region. However, Poroshenko proved an unwilling partner for such deals. His strategy vis-à-vis Russia was to involve the West as a third partner, which could both provide mediation and apply pressure on the Kremlin.
Poroshenko, whose team was finding it difficult to work with Prime Minister Yatseniuk from Tymoshenko's Fatherland Party, hoped to consolidate his hold on power during the preterm parliamentary elections. But Yatseniuk held a strong position by virtue of his control over funding to the regions, while the president's constitutional responsibility for foreign affairs and the military increasingly became a liability in light of the difficult war, which also demonstrated the limits of international diplomacy. In July 2014 the coalition in the parliament collapsed, triggering preterm parliamentary elections within three months.
The president had hoped that his new mega-party, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, which now included Klitschko's UDAR, would obtain enough votes to form a cabinet without Yatseniuk and other Tymoshenko people.
However, it did not help that in August and September 2014 Ukrainian forces suffered some of their worst defeats in the Donbas. Yatseniuk skillfully sidelined his ambitious mentor Tymoshenko to create his own party, the People's Front, which adopted militant rhetoric calculated to contrast with the president's perceived ineptness. The People's Front promised to build a “European wall” on the Russian border and included in its party list some volunteer battalion commanders. As sitting prime minister, Yatseniuk was also well positioned to influence provincial bigwigs, who could deliver the votes. In any case, the People's Front defied poll projections to emerge as the winner among party lists in the elections held on October 26, 2014. Yatseniuk's party received 22.12 percent of the vote, beating out the Poroshenko Bloc with its 21.82 percent. A total newcomer, the Self-Reliance Party, led by the mayor of Lviv, who is close in ideology to European Christian Democrats, ended up in third place with 10.97 percent, highlighting disillusioned voters' continued search for new faces in politics. Yulia Tymoshenko's emasculated Fatherland Party barely crossed the required 5-percent threshold.With the Crimea and much of the Donbas not participating, the Communist Party for the first time ever was not represented in the Ukrainian parliament, having obtained just 3.88 percent of the vote. The remnants of the Party of Regions consolidated into the Opposition Bloc (9.43 percent), which was to become the only real opposition in the new parliament. Buoyed by the war, Ukrainian radical nationalists did better than in the presidential elections, but they still failed to cross the threshold. Freedom ended up just short of it, with 4.71 percent, and Right Sector was further behind, with 1.80 percent.
In addition to those elected on the party lists, the other half of the seats were filled by first-past-the-post winners in electoral districts. There, the Poroshenko Bloc made up for its loss, surpassing People's Front as the largest faction in the parliament. A few other parties also managed to have their candidates elected this way, including Freedom and Right Sector, but not the Communist Party. The behind- the-scenes struggle between the president and the prime minister ended in a draw, forcing their parties to work together more closely. In the winter of 2015 the growth of voter disillusionment with the EuroMaidan coalition was fueled by the ongoing conflict in the Donbas, the collapse of the hryvnia, and the unpopular austerity measures.