WASHINGTON, October 27 (RIA Novosti) - A number of leaders in the new Ukrainian parliament are from previously obscure extremist groups, and can be expected to try and force a new wave of intolerance and muzzling of debate and criticism within Ukraine, Martin Sieff, veteran US foreign correspondent told RIA Novosti on Sunday.
"The real victors in these elections are the neo-fascist extremists," Sieff said, adding that the results will be hailed as a triumph for moderate mainstream American and European-style democracy in Washington and Brussels, however they will be anything but. "This parliament will prove to be a deep embarrassment to the European and American leaders who are so rashly welcoming it. It will be part of the new wave of reckless neo-nationalism, intolerance and racism that we already see sweeping Central Europe from Poland to Hungary," he added.
According to Sieff the prevalence of new and previously marginal extremist parties in the new parliament is certain to prove destabilizing and troublesome.
"It is a universal myth in the West that the simple fact of holding elections will make government and economic progress in those countries more stable and successful," Sieff said. "We have already seen in Egypt and Iraq that this is not always the case. We are about to see that lesson repeated in Ukraine," he noted.
Ukraine's parliamentary elections are likely to lead to increased instability and internal communal conflicts rather than reduce them, the journalist asserted.
According to the exit polls, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc is leading Ukraine's snap parliamentary elections on Sunday with around 23 percent of the ballot as seven political parties have passed the vote threshold.
Poroshenko's bloc is closely followed by Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk's People's Front with some 21.3 percent, Samopomich (Self-Help) party headed by mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovy is in the third place with 13.2 percent.
"The results of the elections are no surprise since the pro-EU and fiercely anti-Russian political parties completely controlled not only the government and presidency, but also the political process across central and western Ukraine," Sieff said.
"This parliament is certainly going to be less democratic, less free and more irresponsibly extreme than any parliament the Ukrainian people has elected since the collapse of the Soviet Union," he added.
According to Sieff more than three million voters in the eastern provinces of Ukraine boycotted the elections and their cities and civilians are still under bombardment by the Ukrainian armed forces directed from Kiev.
"For the first time [since independence], dominant parties based in western Ukraine will be able to totally ignore the interests and concerns of the Russian-speaking population in the east of the country," he emphasized..
The journalist noted that Ukraine faces an economic catastrophe under the dictate of the European Commission in Brussels.
"The full cost of the austerity package that Brussels wants to impose and that current President Pyotr [Petro] Poroshenko wants to impose is now projected to cost at least $200 billion," he explained.
"The Kiev government contains to ignore the concerns of Russia and contains to unleash military violence against the civilian populations of the two provinces that have seceded from it," Sieff said. "That means we are going to see a winter of economic crisis and hardship in Ukraine. And the full costs of Poroshenko's policies will become clear to the Ukrainian people."
"Ukraine's biased and tilted political system has just elected a parliament of extremists and Robespierres. It has not elected a parliament of moderates, compromisers or Adenauers," Sieff concluded.
Early parliamentary elections were held in Ukraine on Sunday. Ukrainians went to the polls to vote in 423 members of parliament - 225 of them from party lists and 198 in single-candidate constituencies. The electoral threshold is set at five percent.
The elections were held against the background of a serious political and economic crisis in the country. The Ukrainian authorities have recognized that elections cannot be held in half of the districts of the country’s eastern regions due to the armed conflict between government troops and independence supporters of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics.
