| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Turnout | 59.88% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Snap presidential elections were held in Ukraine on 25 May 2014 and resulted in Petro Poroshenko being elected President of Ukraine. [1] Originally scheduled to take place on 29 March 2015, the date was brought forward following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. [2] [3] Poroshenko won the elections with 55% of the vote, enough to win in a single round. [4] [5] His closest competitor, Yulia Tymoshenko, received 13% of the vote. [4] The Central Election Commission reported voter turnout over 60%, excluding the regions not under government control. [6] [7] Since Poroshenko obtained an absolute majority in the first round, a run-off second ballot (scheduled for 15 June 2014 [8] ) was unnecessary. [1] [9]
The election was not held everywhere in Ukraine. During the 2014 Crimean crisis, Ukraine lost control over Crimea, which was unilaterally annexed by Russia in March 2014. [10] [11] [a] As a result, elections were not held in Crimea. [1] Of the 2,430 planned ballot stations (in Donbas), only 426 opened for polling. [13] The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, controlling large parts of Donbas, had vowed to do everything possible to disrupt the elections on their territory. [14]
Petro Poroshenko won the presidency and served a full presidential term until 2019, losing to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Initially the elections were scheduled for 29 March 2015. [15]
On 7 December 2012 Batkivshchyna nominated Yulia Tymoshenko as its presidential candidate. [16] On 14 June 2013, the congress of her party approved the decision to nominate her as its candidate for the presidential election. [17] On 11 October 2011, a Ukrainian court found Tymoshenko guilty of abuse of power, sentenced her to seven years in jail and banned her from seeking elected office for her period of imprisonment. [18] [19] [20] Because Tymoshenko was in prison during the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Arseniy Yatsenyuk headed the election list of Batkivshchyna. [21] [22] Tymoshenko remained in prison until 22 February 2014, after parliament voted for her release and removal of her criminal record, allowing her to compete for elected office once again. [10]
In May 2013 Batkivshchyna, UDAR, and Svoboda vowed to coordinate their actions during the presidential campaign, and promised "to support the candidate from among these parties who wins a place in the run-off election". [23] If the election format were to change to a single round, the three parties vowed to agree on a single candidate. [23]
On 24 October 2013, the leader [24] of UDAR, Vitali Klitschko, announced he intended to take part in the election. [25] Experts and lawyers argued that it is unclear if Klitschko could take part. [25] Under Ukrainian law a presidential candidate must have had his residence in Ukraine for the past ten years prior to election day. Klitschko has lived for many years in both Ukraine and Germany, where, according to media reports, he has a residence permit. [25] Klitschko confirmed on 28 February 2014 that he would take part in the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election. [26] However, on 29 March, he withdrew from the race for the presidency, simultaneously pledging his support for Petro Poroshenko. [27]
Former President Viktor Yanukovych, prior to his dismissal and subsequent flight from the country (see below), was considered likely to run for his second and final term. [28] [b] [c] But, as of 19 December 2013, he had made no final decision on this. [32] On 19 December 2013, Yanukovych alluded to not participating when he stated "If, theoretically speaking, my rating is low and has no prospects, I won't hinder the country's development and movement ahead". [32]
On 21 November 2013, the Ukrainian Second Azarov Government suspended preparations for signing an association agreement with the European Union. [10] [33] The decision to postpone the signing of the association agreement led to massive protests across Ukraine. [34] These led to the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych and his government by the parliament in February, as part of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, during which Yanukovych fled the country to Russia. [10] [35] On 22 February 2014, the Verkhovna Rada voted 328–0 [36] to dismiss Yanukovych as president. [37] Oleksandr Turchynov, deputy chairman of Batkivshchyna, who had been appointed as Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada earlier that day,[ citation needed ] was named acting Prime Minister, [38] and, due to Yanukovych's deposition, acting president, until new elections could be held.
In a press conference in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on 28 February, Yanukovych stated that he would not take part in the elections, stating that "I believe they are unlawful, and I will not take part in them". [39] It was later speculated that Serhiy Tihipko would be the presidential candidate of the Party of Regions, Yanukovych's former party. [40] The party's nomination went to Mykhailo Dobkin, however, and Tihipko entered the elections as an independent candidate. [41] Dobkin was amongst the persons wanted by the (then new) Yatsenyuk Government to be sent for trial at the International Criminal Court. [42]
During the 2014 Crimean crisis and Russian military intervention, Ukraine lost control over the Crimea, which was unilaterally annexed by Russia in March 2014. [10] [11] As a result, elections were not held in the Crimea, but Ukrainians who had kept their Ukrainian citizenship were allowed to vote elsewhere in Ukraine. [1]
In the Donbas region of the Eastern Ukraine, pro-Russian protests escalated into an armed separatist insurgency early in April 2014, when masked gunmen took control of several of the region's government buildings and towns. [10] [43]
On 15 April 2014, Ukrainian media reported that the General Prosecutor of Ukraine had launched criminal proceedings against then-candidate Oleg Tsaryov for allegedly aiding separatists and thus violating Ukraine's territorial integrity. [44] Tsarov withdrew his candidacy on 29 April. [45]
Serhiy Taruta, governor of Donetsk, has suggested a referendum, to be held on 15 June, at the same time as the potential second round of the election. The referendum would address the decentralization of political power, potentially giving regions a greater say in their own affairs, such as greater control over the taxes they levy and the power to make Russian a second official language. [8]
On 16 May 2014, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruled that the candidate elected as a result of the presidential election would serve a full five-year term of office. [46]
On 17 May 2014, the Central Election Commission of Ukraine (CEC) stated that, due to "illegal actions of unknown people", it could not arrange for the "preparation and conduct of elections" in six constituencies in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. [47] According to the CEC, members of district election commissions there had received threats to their own personal safety and to that of their families. [47] The CEC warned that two million people in the two oblasts (provinces), about 5.6% of Ukraine's approximately 36 million eligible voters, could be deprived of their right to vote if the situation there did not improve. [47] [d] [e] On 22 May, the work of eighteen of the thirty-four election commissions in Donetsk [f] and Luhansk Oblasts had been stopped fully or partially by representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. [49] By 23 May, this number had increased to twenty of the thirty-four. [50] The Committee of Voters of Ukraine predicted on 23 May that, due to "ongoing acts of terrorism and armed insurgency", 10% of the Ukrainian population would be unable to vote. [51] [g] On the same day, the leader of the Luhansk People's Republic advised citizens not to go to the polls to vote, warning of possible provocative "explosions" set by Ukrainian military. [52]
On 25 May 2014, 27 mayoral elections were also held, [53] including those in Odesa and 2014 Kyiv local election. [53] [54]
Initially Russia opposed rescheduling the election because the Russian government considered the removal of then President Viktor Yanukovych illegal and his temporary successors an "illegitimate junta". [55] But on 7 May 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin stated the election would be a step "in the right direction" but that the vote would decide nothing unless the rights of "all citizens" were protected. [56] At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on 23 May 2014, Putin appeared to further move away from Russia's initial position by announcing that Russia would respect the outcome of the elections in Ukraine and was ready to work with whoever won the presidency. [57]
The US and European Union vowed early May 2014 that they would impose further sanctions against Russia (sanctions have been in place against Russia since its annexation of Crimea [58] ) if it disrupted the election. However, unlike previous sanctions which were limited to individuals and companies, the third stage is set to target entire sectors of the Russian economy. [59] Earlier the US and the EU had accused Russia of destabilising Ukraine by stoking the 2014 pro-Russian rebellion in Eastern Ukraine, a charge Russia has denied. [60]
The term of office for the Ukrainian president is five years. [61] [62] [63] If no candidate had obtained an absolute majority in the first round, then the two highest polling candidates would have contested a run-off second ballot on 15 June 2014. [1] [9]
Arsen Avakov [ who? ] underlined the importance of Elections 2014 a new IT elections monitoring system ("Ukrainian : Вибори 2014") that allowed voters to track the progress of the elections in real time, potentially increasing transparency, and avoiding the post-election disturbances seen in prior Ukrainian elections. [64] On 22 May 2014, three days before the election, hacker group CyberBerkut announced that it had compromised the primary servers of the Central Election Commission and stolen passwords from the servers. [65] [66] As well, the Security Service of Ukraine investigated the servers and discovered malware that would have destroyed election results. [67] On election day, authorities arrested a group of hackers with specialized equipment in Kyiv. They had been attempting to rig the election. [68]
21 candidates took part in the elections; seven of them had been nominated by political parties, 15 were self-nominees. [41] [69] A total of 18 candidates ran for president in 2010. [70] Before 7 April 2014, four Party of Regions members were running for election, but on 7 April 2014 the political council of the party expelled the presidential candidates Serhiy Tihipko, Oleh Tsarov and Yuriy Boiko from the party. On 29 March a Party of Regions convention supported Mykhailo Dobkin's nomination as a presidential candidate. [71]
Candidates were able to nominate themselves at the Central Election Commission of Ukraine from 25 February 2014 until 30 March 2014. The last date for registering candidates was 4 April 2014. [70] [72] [73] Candidates needed to submit a full package of documents and a ₴2.5 million deposit. [70]
The Central Election Commission was unable to remove from the ballot the names of candidates who withdrew from the race after the deadline of 1 May 2014. [82] [83]
The Central Election Commission rejected some applications for candidate registration early in the process. It refused to register O. Burnashova, V. Marynych, A. Makhlai, A. Kucheryavenko, V. Chopei, L. Rozhnova, L. Maksymenko, D. Myroshnychenko, P. Rekal, T. Onopriyuk, and Z. Abbasov. [84] [85] [86] [87] [88] On 3 April 2014 the CEC rejected a further three candidates: a man named Darth Vader, Evhen Terekhov, and Yuriy Ivanitsky. [89]
On 29 March 2014, Vitali Klitschko (UDAR) endorsed Petro Poroshenko, [90] and announced he would run for Mayor of Kyiv in the local election taking place alongside the presidential election. [91] [92]
The Central Election Commission of Ukraine (CEC) had registered 543 international official observers on 2 May 2014. [93] On 23 May (two days before the election) this number had risen to 3,607 (CEC had completed the registration of observers on 19 May but on 23 May had allowed 823 members of the observer organization European Platform for Democratic Elections). [94] Among others OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, OSCE's Parliamentary Assembly, the Ukrainian World Congress and the United States sent observers. [93] OSCE deployed 100 long-term observers and 900 short-term observers. [95] On 9 May 2014 U.S. Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland stated her country would support 255 long-term and more than 3,300 short-term observers. [96] Russia did not send observers. [97] Other Commonwealth of Independent States members also did not send observers; because Ukraine had not sent an invitation to the CIS Election Monitoring Organisation. [98]
Petro Poroshenko won the elections with 55% of the vote. [4] His closest competitor was Yulia Tymoshenko, who emerged with 13% of the votes. [4] The Central Election Commission reported voter turnout at 60% excluding those regions not under government control. [6] [7] In the Donbas region of Ukraine only 20% of the ballot stations were open due to threats and violence by pro-Russia separatists. [13] Of the 2,430 planned ballot stations (in Donbas) only 426 remained open for polling. [13]
Exit polls had also predicted that Poroshenko won the election outright [99] with over 55.9% of the votes, [13]
Candidate | Party | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Petro Poroshenko | Independent (UDAR) | 9,857,308 | 55.46 | |
Yulia Tymoshenko | Batkivshchyna | 2,310,050 | 13.00 | |
Oleh Liashko | Radical Party | 1,500,377 | 8.44 | |
Anatoliy Hrytsenko | Civil Position | 989,029 | 5.56 | |
Serhiy Tihipko | Independent (Strong Ukraine) | 943,430 | 5.31 | |
Mykhailo Dobkin | Party of Regions | 546,138 | 3.07 | |
Vadim Rabinovich | Independent | 406,301 | 2.29 | |
Olha Bohomolets | Independent | 345,384 | 1.94 | |
Petro Symonenko | Communist Party of Ukraine | 272,723 | 1.53 | |
Oleh Tyahnybok | Svoboda | 210,476 | 1.18 | |
Dmytro Yarosh | Right Sector | 127,772 | 0.72 | |
Andriy Hrynenko | Independent | 73,277 | 0.41 | |
Valeriy Konovalyuk | Independent | 69,572 | 0.39 | |
Yuriy Boyko | Independent | 35,928 | 0.20 | |
Mykola Malomuzh | Independent | 23,771 | 0.13 | |
Renat Kuzmin | Independent | 18,689 | 0.11 | |
Vasyl Kuybida | People's Movement of Ukraine | 12,391 | 0.07 | |
Oleksandr Klymenko | Ukrainian People's Party | 10,542 | 0.06 | |
Vasyl Tsushko | Independent | 10,434 | 0.06 | |
Volodymyr Saranov | Independent | 6,232 | 0.04 | |
Zoryan Shkiryak | Independent | 5,021 | 0.03 | |
Total | 17,774,845 | 100.00 | ||
Valid votes | 17,774,845 | 98.64 | ||
Invalid/blank votes | 244,555 | 1.36 | ||
Total votes | 18,019,400 | 100.00 | ||
Registered voters/turnout | 30,095,028 | 59.88 | ||
Source: CEC |
Despite Russia's earlier protest at rescheduling the election and the general tense relation between the countries at the time because of the annexation of Crimea and the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised the vote. [100]
The leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, controlling large parts of the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, declared that the regions had made their choice shown in the highly disputed results of the status referendum of 11 May. [13]
US President Barack Obama congratulated Petro Poroshenko with his victory by telephone 2 days after the election. [101] This was also done by President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso and European Parliament President Martin Schulz and other EU leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande. [102] [103]
This article presents the historical development and role of political parties in Ukrainian politics, and outlines more extensively the significant modern political parties since Ukraine gained independence in 1991.
Elections in Ukraine are held to choose the president, Verkhovna Rada (legislature), and local governments. Referendums may be held on special occasions. Ukraine has a multi-party system, often no single party has a chance of gaining power alone, and parties must work with each other to form coalition governments.
The Party of Regions is a banned pro-Russian political party in Ukraine formed in late 1997 that became the largest party in Ukraine between 2006 and 2014.
European Solidarity is a political party in Ukraine. It has its roots in a parliamentary group called Solidarity dating from 2000 and has existed since in various forms as a political outlet for Petro Poroshenko. The party with its then name Petro Poroshenko Bloc won 132 of the 423 contested seats in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, more than any other party.
Petro Oleksiiovych Poroshenko is a Ukrainian oligarch and politician who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.
Anatoliy Stepanovych Hrytsenko is a Ukrainian politician, independent deputy of the 7th Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, former Minister of Defence, and member of the Our Ukraine political party and leader of the Civil Position party.
Presidential elections were held in Ukraine on 17 January 2010. As no candidate received a majority of the vote, a run-off election was held between Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych on 7 February.
The European Party of Ukraine is a Ukrainian political party registered by the Ministry of Justice on August 3, 2006. Its ideology is social-liberalism, when the state should maintain harmonious social relations: create appropriate conditions for free competition, to prevent the formation of market monopolies and protect the vulnerable population strata. They advocate reforms that they claim will increase social standards of life of Ukrainians to the European level. They support integration of Ukraine into the European Union. Initially, the party was headed by Mykola Moskalenko. In August 2013 the party had more than 5,000 members. The party did not take part in national elections since 2012.
The Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform of Vitali Klitschko is a political party in Ukraine headed by retired Ukrainian professional heavyweight boxer and WBC world heavyweight champion emeritus Vitali Klitschko. The party has been an observer member of the European People's Party (EPP) since 2013.
Parliamentary elections were held in Ukraine on 28 October 2012. Because of various reasons, including the "impossibility of announcing election results" various by-elections have taken place since. Hence, several constituencies have been left unrepresented at various times.
Natalia Yuriivna Korolevska is a Ukrainian politician and former Minister of Social Policy of Ukraine. Since 23 December 2011, she has been the party-leader of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party. On 22 March 2012, the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party was renamed Party of Natalia Korolevska "Ukraine – Forward!". Korolevska has been a people's deputy in Ukraine's parliament for four of its convocations until, during the 9th Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, her mandate was terminated on her own request in February 2023.
Serhiy Leonidovych Tihipko is a Ukrainian businessman and politician who was Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine. After founding the TAS Group conglomerate in 1998, Tihipko was Minister of Economics in 2000 and subsequently served as Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine from 2002 to 2004. He ran unsuccessfully for President of Ukraine in the 2010 presidential election and participated in the 2014 presidential election, in which he placed fifth with 5.23 percent of the vote. Tihipko is also former Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Social Policy.
Hennadiy Hennadiyovych Moskal was a Ukrainian politician who served as governor of Zakarpattia Oblast from 2015 to 2019. He was previously appointed governor of Luhansk Oblast during the early stages of the War in Donbas.
Snap parliamentary elections were held in Ukraine on 26 October 2014 to elect members of the Verkhovna Rada. President Petro Poroshenko had pressed for early parliamentary elections since his victory in the presidential elections in May. The July breakup of the ruling coalition gave him the right to dissolve the parliament, so on 25 August 2014 he announced the early election.
Serhiy Oleksiyovych Taruta is a Ukrainian politician and current member of the Ukrainian parliament, Ukrainian businessman, sometimes called an oligarch, founder of Industrial Union of Donbas, former President of FC Metalurh Donetsk, and the former governor of Donetsk Oblast.
The 2014 Ukrainian local elections took place on 25 May 2014, four years after the conclusion of the last local elections, which took place in October 2010. The elections occurred during the political crisis in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.
On 25 October 2015 local elections took place in Ukraine. The elections were conducted a little over a year since the 2014 snap local elections, which were only held throughout parts of the country. A second round of voting for the election of mayors in cities with more than 90,000 residents where no candidate gained more than 50% of the votes were held on 15 November 2015.
The Opposition Bloc was a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine that was founded in 2014 by the merger of six parties that did not endorse Euromaidan. Legally, the party was created by renaming the lesser-known party "Leading Force". The party was perceived as the successor of the disbanded Party of Regions.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the 8th convocation was a convocation of the legislative branch of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's unicameral parliament. The 8th convocation met at the Verkhovna Rada building in Kyiv, having begun its term on 27 November 2014 following the last session of the 7th Verkhovna Rada. Its five-year term came to an end on July 24, 2019, marking the end of its tenth session.
Presidential elections were held in Ukraine on 31 March 2019. As none of the 39 candidates on the ballot received an absolute majority of the initial vote, a runoff was held on 21 April between the top two vote-getters, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a television personality, and Petro Poroshenko, the incumbent president. The Central Election Commission (CEC) announced that Zelenskyy won the second round with 73.22% of the total vote. The elections were recognized as free and fair by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.