KIEV, November 21 (Sputnik) – Representatives of five Ukrainian parties have signed a draft agreement on the creation of a coalition in the country's parliament, Verkhovna Rada, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports.
Earlier, leader of the Ukrainian nationalist Radical Party Oleh Lyashko said the draft agreement had been signed by only four parties, with that of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko having refused to put a signature on the document.
Last week, Poroshenko's party, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, unveiled a draft coalition agreement on its website, which it said had been framed together with the People's Front party, headed by Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, as well as the Samopomich (Self-Help) party, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party and the Radical Party.
Early parliamentary elections took place in Ukraine on October 26. Ukrainians went to the polls to vote for 423 members of parliament — 225 of them from party lists and 198 in single-candidate constituencies. Parts of southeastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions did not vote.
The Petro Poroshenko Bloc received a total of 132 seats, People's Front gained 82 seats, while Samopomich, Radical Party, Batkivshchyna and the Opposition Bloc, the sixth party that made it to the Verkhovna Rada, received 32, 22, 17 and 27 seats, respectively.
In the wake of the vote, Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk entered talks to form a "powerful democratic coalition" of pro-European parties in the Rada, a move applauded by the West.
