The alliances in Ukraine’s presidential election bode ill for the country’s ability to unite once the votes are counted.

The Gangs of Kyiv, and Odessa, 

and Dnepropetrovsk

by Oles Oleksiyenko

The alliances in Ukraine’s presidential election bode ill for the country’s ability to unite once the votes are counted. From The Ukrainian Week.

Despite hopes of another chance to reboot the country after a second revolution, Ukraine is slowly entering the second round of squabbles within the once-uniform Orange team. The leaders in this presidential campaign are bringing back the groups of “Yulians” (after Yulia Tymoshenko) and “Viktorians” (the former team of Viktor Yushchenko, now embodied in the “Petrorians” after Petro Poroshenko), almost identical to those from the post-Orange Revolution years of 2005-2009. When Yushchenko was president and Tymoshenko was premier, they waged a bitter struggle against each other instead of reforming and strengthening the country.

In the current campaign, the top three spots have been unchanged for a while. According to a late-April survey by the Rating sociological agency, Poroshenko enjoys the support of 43.4 percent of those polled. Tymoshenko has 13.9 percent. Serhiy Tihipko, Anatoliy Hritsenko, and Mykhailo Dobkin would get 6.7 percent, 4.5 percent, and 4.3 percent respectively.

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