Published in BBC

The pro-Western parties of Orange Revolution leaders Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko appear to have won a slim majority in Ukraine's election.

Exit polls suggest their combined vote gives them a slender advantage over Russian-leaning PM Viktor Yanukovych.

He took 35.5% of the vote, with Ms Tymoshenko's bloc second on 31.5%, exit polls suggested.

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Published in The Guardian
By: Luke Harding

Ukraine's populist orange leader Yulia Tymoshenko was on the verge of a spectacular comeback last night after exit polls from yesterday's parliamentary elections showed she was on course to become the country's prime minister.

The polls suggested that Ms Tymoshenko's party won 32.4% of the vote, just behind the current prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, whose Party of the Regions was projected to win 34.9%.

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Published in The International Herald Tribune / The Associated Press

Ukraine's Orange Revolution allies made a strong combined showing in parliamentary elections and looked poised to win a majority that could unseat the prime minister and steer the country more firmly onto a pro-Western course, an exit poll showed.

Sunday's election was called early in an attempt to end a standoff between Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and President Viktor Yushchenko and shake sense into the ex-Soviet nation's politics after years of infighting.

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Published in The Christian Science Monitor
By Fred Weir

In the run-up to Sunday's elections, Ukraine saw open competition between sharply differing political parties, a wide spectrum of media coverage, and little direct state interference.

Some grumbled, but most Ukrainians went willingly to the polls Sunday to take part in a civic exercise that's become increasingly rare in most parts of the former Soviet Union – free, open, and truly competitive elections.

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Published in UNIAN

BYUT leader Yulia Tymoshenko will turn to the President with a request to start the formation of the coalition and government as early as tomorrow.

According to an UNIAN correspondent, Yulia Tymoshenko said this today at the news conference at the BYuT headquarters.

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Source BYuT / UNIAN

BYuT Vice-Chairman Oleksander Turchynov believes that the publicized data of the exit-polls does not give an adequate representation of a possible coalition makeup.

According to a UNIAN correspondent, he claimed this in a press conference today, commenting on the initial results of the exit-polls.

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Published in UNIAN

The European Agency of marketing studies TSN and American companies PSB and Public Strategies have publicized results of their own exit-polls, which have been publicized at ICTV television.

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Published in UNIAN

According to the data of the exit-poll, publicized by “Sociovymir 2007”, the Party of Regions received 34.7%, the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko – 31%, Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense – 14.6%, the Communist Party of Ukraine – 4.9%, Lytvyn’s Bloc – 3.6%.

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Published in BBC

Ukrainians are voting in their third national election in as many years.

The parliamentary poll was called by President Viktor Yushchenko, in an attempt to break the political deadlock with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

However, the BBC's Helen Fawkes in the capital Kiev says no one party is expected to gain an outright victory.

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Published in ForUm

President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko and leaders of the main political parties and blocs of Ukraine will vote in Kyiv, and only leader of the BYuT Yulia Tymoshenko will give her voice in her native city Dnipropetrivsk. The headquarters of the main political forces informs.

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Published in AFP

President Viktor Yushchenko appealed Saturday for Ukrainians to end "chaos" and vote for reform, on the eve of snap legislative elections called to end months of political deadlock.

"There's been enough chaos, stagnation and false reforms," Yushchenko said in an address broadcast on state television.

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Published in Bloomberg
By Daryna Krasnolutska and Sebastian Alison

Ukraine's Orange Revolution allies, Yulia Timoshenko and President Viktor Yushchenko, said their renewed alliance after a two-year split will bring them victory in tomorrow's parliamentary elections.

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Published in Earthtimes.org

International observers from 17 countries have gathered in Ukraine to monitor Sunday's parliamentary elections for voter fraud.

The 3,355 registered observers are expected to assess the election in public statements Monday, Itar-Tass said Saturday.

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Published in UNIAN

Viktor Baloha, head of President Victor Yushchenko’s secretariat, has said Ukraine’s democratic forces “have no right to waste time”, according to the President`s press-office. 

“It is necessary to immediately correct the critical situation created by the coalition led by Viktor Yanukovych. So the democratic forces must form a coalition government in the shortest possible time,” he said on Friday, adding that an action plan for Ukraine’s new democratic government could be ready within the next few days.

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Published in REGNUM

“Only a democratic coalition can bring Ukraine into Europe. I do not doubt that the democratic forces would win this time. We have an agreement with BYT, which means establishing next parliamentary majority and the next morning after the elections we shall sign a coalition agreement,” leader of Our Ukraine-People’s Defense bloc Yuri Lutsenko announced today, a REGNUM correspondent informs.

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Published in ForUm

United States Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor approached international observers from the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America to be tolerant and unbiased when watching the elections on September 30. He urged them to stick to this principle when meeting the Committee mission.

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Published in BBC
By: Helen Fawkes

Ukrainians are about to go to the polls for the fifth time in three years.

Brightly coloured flags and campaign tents line many of the streets in the capital, Kiev, once again.

The parliamentary election, which will take place on Sunday, was called to try to solve a political crisis.

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Published in International Herald Tribune / The Associated Press

The party of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the champion of Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, appeared to hold the lead Friday going into this weekend's parliamentary elections, prompting a last-minute reconciliation between his divided, Western-oriented opposition.

The early vote was called to end a long-standing political deadlock pitting forces loyal to Yanukovych against those of his archrival, President Viktor Yushchenko, elected following Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution.

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Published in Reuters
By Ron Popeski

Ukraine leader embraces ex-PM, urges "orange" vote

President Viktor Yushchenko, newly reconciled with "Orange Revolution" heroine Yulia Tymoshenko, embraced her on Thursday and urged liberals to set aside past quarrels and unite to win a weekend parliamentary election.

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Published in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
By: Jan Maksymiuk

If Ukrainians are to believe the promises being made by the parties participating in the country's early parliamentary elections, their lives should improve regardless of who wins. The major players in the September 30 polls have all made generous pledges to the electorate. The question is how they plan to overcome the mathematical impossibility of paying for all that has been promised.

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Published in Financial Times
By Roman Olearchyk and Stefan Wagstyl

When Viktor Yanukovich, Ukraine’s prime minister, hits the Black Sea port of Odessa in the last days of campaigning before Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the crowd greets him with cheers, applause and a mass of blue flags.

President Victor Yushchenko has called elections early, only 18 months after the last parliamentary vote, to try to resolve his bitter three-year power struggle with Mr Yanukovich.
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The Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT) has established a voter verification system to help prevent electoral fraud and monitor falsifications in Ukraine’s parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for Sunday 30 September, 2007. The adopted process uses a three-part methodology to thwart fraud and report violations.

The first methodology was during several previous elections and involves BYuT observers at Ukraine’s 34,000 polling stations viewing the results protocols and relaying the information by telephone to a call-center, which is then forwarded to a central computer.

“Using this method we always got information earlier than the Central Election Commission (CEC) received it,” said Oleksandr Turchynov, BYuT Deputy Chairman and leader of Mrs Tymoshenko’s election campaign. He added that after getting results from 30 percent of polling stations, “mathematical programs developed by our specialists will allow us to get a general result with an error level of less than one percent.”

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Press Conference

Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT) invites international media to attend the press conference of Yulia Tymoshenko.

The press conference will be held on Friday, Sept 28, 13.00 at BYuT’s headquatres (13 Turivska St.).

Translation into English will be provided. For accreditation, please call 462-57-50.
If you have any questions, please call Natasha Lysova at +38 067 323 6040 or email nlysova@beauty.net.ua

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Published in BBC Monitoring Kyiv Unit

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has opened three criminal cases over inaccurate voter rolls, the Inter TV channel reported on 26 September. It added that the flaws were discovered following citizens' calls to a hot line and that the number of such calls has doubled in the run-up to the 30 September parlaimentary election, amounting to over 100 a day.

The SBU's checks of voter rolls at constituency No 49 in Mariupol, Donetsk Region, revealed over 10,000 double entries, the channel said. It quoted the deputy head of the local electoral commission, Halyna Onyshchenko, as saying that they occurred due to the use of various spellings of voters' names by the police, tax administration and local housing utility registrars whose data was consolidated by the local electoral commission's special working group.

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Published in Kyiv Post
By: Oksana Bashuk Hepburn

As Ukraine nears the Sept. 30 parliamentary elections, voters are splitting three ways: one-third favors the Orange forces led by Yulia Tymoshneko’s bloc; one-third supports Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions; and the rest won’t say.

Who will win depends on the undecided voters and their view of frontrunners, like the Party of Regions. After18 months of parliamentary power, it can reap the benefits of office. In this time, the prime minister has projected a respectable image, shedding the somewhat bumbling, goon-like image he had during the presidential elections of 2004. Ukraine’s robust economy favors him. Foreign investments have surpassed $5 billion, almost three times the 2003 figures.

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Published in ForUm

President Viktor Yushchenko on Thursday met with Yulia Tymoshenko, former Prime Minister and leader of Ukraine’s biggest opposition bloc, President’s press office reports.

The President insists that the country’s democratic forces must be united to win this week’s parliamentary elections and form a coalition government. He is convinced all the democrats, especially those who stood shoulder-to-shoulder in Kyiv’s Independence Square during the Orange revolution, have learned a lesson from their falling out. He has said it is very important to makeUkrainian votersbelieve the democrats are ready to act together and implement national priorities. “I would like to say that we have only one option and this option is to form a democratic coalition. Full stop. There will be no other coalition,” he said.

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Published in Ukrayinska Pravda

President Viktor Yushchenko warns Prime Minister and Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych and other officials of bearing personal responsibility for election fraud.

The President’s comments came during his visit to Sumy.

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Published in NRCU

Chief of the BYUT central elections staff Oleksandr Turchynov said this today.

According to him, due to mobile collection of returns by the BYUT observers, protocol data will come to the bloc's call-centre faster than to other political forces and by midnight "we will know the results with 0.5% accuracy", Mr Turchynov said. Besides, electronic copies of elections commission's protocols will come to the BYUT headquarters and will be compared to those coming to the CEC, with a view of avoiding frauds and promptly receive information about the poll.

Click Icon to Watch Video

Published in CBN News
By: George Thomas

Over the past few years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to reestablish Russia's dominance over other countries in the former Soviet empire.

In a few days, one of those countries, Ukraine, will hold parliamentary elections. The outcome is crucial to Russia's plans for a comeback.

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President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko doesn’t exclude that Yulia Tymoshenko may return to the position of the Prime Minister of Ukraine. The Head of the State stated during the video conference “Tasks for the future government”.

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Published in Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) / Earthtimes.org

Ukraine's top political party, Regions Ukraine, intends to be even bigger after the Soviet republic's next parliamentary election on Sunday. That's the plan, anyway.

Party strategists predict Regions will grab between 37 and 40 per cent of the popular vote on September 30, placing them in the driver's seat during horse-trading to create the next ruling coalition.

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It has long been argued that Ukraine is a country at the crossroads. Over the past three years, a rollercoaster of internal developments, Russia's increasing assertiveness and, most importantly, the EU's continued ambivalence have arguably made this assessment justified.

Over the past year, however, Brussels' position on Ukraine has achieved a reasonable, if understated, level of consistency. As Ukraine approaches crucial polls on 30 September, it may then be useful to spell out what Ukrainians can realistically expect from it.

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Published in UNIAN

Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL), Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission) and Co-Chairman Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), issued the following statement regarding Ukraine’s parliamentary elections that will be held on Sunday, September 30. A longstanding political dispute between President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich – rooted in weak constitutional delineations of their powers – resulted in a political crisis in April and May. After weeks of tense standoff, agreement was reached calling for early elections to be held on September 30.

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Published in Frankfurther Allgemeine Sunday Edition, September 23, 2007, no. 38, p. 12.
By Konrad Schuller

Yulia Tymoshenko has reached out to the middle-right with her political platform. With it, her chances in the Ukrainian parliamentary elections are good.

Bila Tserkva. The fact that her voice has become raw over the past few days only enhances its impact. It is election season once again in Ukraine, and Yulia Tymoshenko, who two years ago was the Joan of Arc of the “Orange Revolution,” is doing what she does best: she is fighting. Under her gold-blonde wreath of hair, half crown, half halo, her ivory white, fitted dress shines against the steel gray of the housing complexes. Nobody can understand how someone can look so immaculate after an eighteen-hour day on the campaign trail. But this is Yulia Tymoshenko: part blushing bride of the fatherland, part queenly Morgan le Fay.

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Published in Financial Times

Ukrainian voters are understandably less than thrilled by the choice offered in next Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

In the three years since the 2004 Orange revolution, they have seen their leaders quarrel, swap corruption charges and generally fail to establish a stable government.

If the opinion polls are right, the election will not make a decisive change: President Viktor Yushchenko, prime minister Viktor Yanukovich and opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko will remain in charge of the three biggest political blocs, with none having a majority. The only answer will be more bickering and more bargaining.

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Published in Reuters
By Ron Popeski

The leaders of Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" have set aside their differences but face a battle to win back voters disenchanted with progress since the mass protests of 2004.

President Viktor Yushchenko and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko have been touring strongholds in western Ukraine urging voters to forget the disunity that toppled their first government and back their parties in Sunday's parliamentary election.

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Source BYuT / UNIAN

Signatures of 7,153,000 Ukrainian citizens have been collected in favor of carrying out an all-Ukrainian referendum on constitutional reform, according to BYuT leader Yulia Tymoshenko at a news conference in Rivne on Monday.

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Published in RFE/RL Newsline
By: JM

Yulia Tymoshenko, the head of the election bloc bearing her name, has urged President Yushchenko to nominate her for the post of prime minister if the pro-presidential Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense (NUNS) bloc and her force win the September 30 polls, Reuters reported on September 23. In an interview with the agency, Tymoshenko said Yushchenko should unambiguously rule out any post-election coalition with the Party of Regions led by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. "Now is the time to tell people who are going to vote just what sort of coalition they can expect by voting for this or that political party Read More...

Published in RIA Novosti

The most effective electoral campaign of Ukraine's much anticipated parliamentary elections is that of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT), according to the majority (81%) of experts interviewed by a polling agency.

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Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of Ukraine’s opposition party (BYuT), met with the Rt. Hon. Baroness Margaret Thatcher on 21 September, 2007 in London. Ms. Tymoshenko held private discussions with the “Iron Lady,” who was Britain’s Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 and credited with transforming the country and helping to end the Cold War.

The former prime ministers discussed the forthcoming parliamentary election in Ukraine, which is scheduled for 30 September, 2007 and the long-term reform program designed to bring Ukraine up to European standards.

Lady Thatcher expressed her hope that Ukraine’s election would be fair and pronounced her wish for the Ukrainian people to keep alive the spirit of freedom and democracy that characterized the Orange Revolution. She went on to express her admiration for all Ms. Tymoshenko has achieved and wished her well for the future.

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Published in UNIAN

Ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain (1979-1990) Margaret Thatcher and BYuT front-runner Yulia Tymoshenko met in London yesterday. They discussed the current Ukrainian problems and preparing the country to the upcoming election.

According to the BYuT press-service, M.Thatcher shared her electoral experience and wished success to Yulia Tymoshenko and her political force at the election. “I know that the last ten days of the campaign are the hardest ten days”, she stressed.

M.Thatcher presented the BYuT leader her book of memories with an inscription “To Yulia, who fought for the freedom of her country so passionately and devotedly”.

The British ex-Prime Minister noted: “Despite all troubles and political treasons, I always went straight forth to my aim, which I believed to be right. You do the same”.

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Published in Eurasia Daily Monitor
By: Taras Kuzio

Ukraine’s parliamentary elections on September 30 are unlikely to bring overwhelming victories for either the “orange” camp of Our Ukraine-Self Defense and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc or the “blue” camp of the Party of Regions. Ukraine’s regional and linguistic divide makes such a landslide unlikely; instead, both camps will remain in the 45-55% range. Nevertheless, there are trends that do reflect changes in electoral geography and voter intentions.

Ukraine’s regionalism means that no political force has country-wide support. Thus the winning side in a Ukrainian election is unable to put the other side out of business, making it impossible to institute an autocracy.

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Published in Business Ukraine
By: Oksana Bondarchuk

The Tymoshenko Bloc has gone on the offensive prior to the September 30 parliamentary vote and focused its election campaign on the core Yanukovych-supporting regions of eastern and southern Ukraine. But can this assault on the Party of Regions’ stronghold bridge the great Ukrainian divide?

Throughout the current election campaign, analysts have consistently stated that the results of the September 30 vote are unlikely to be substantially different from those of the March 2006 parliamentary elections, leaving the country facing yet more political stalemate and uncertainty. This has not deterred the Tymoshenko Bloc (BYUT) from launching an ambitious promotional campaign throughout the southern and eastern regions of the country long considered the heartlands of Yanukovych support in what is being portrayed as an ambitious bid to break through the partisan regionalism dividing the Ukrainian electorate.

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Published in The Times
By: Tony Halpin

Alone on a stage facing a crowd of 5,000 people, Yuliya Tymoshenko cut an isolated figure, the eye of a storm that is her election campaign to become Ukraine’s next Prime Minister.

Immaculate in an ivory suit, her hair wound in its trademark peasant halo, she railed for an hour against the corruption that blights Ukraine’s economy and political life.

As she spoke screens flashed pictures of the two Viktors who form, with her, the country’s three-way struggle for power — Prime Minister Yanukovych, her principal adversary, and President Yushchenko, her former partner in the Orange Revolution that promised democracy and prosperity.

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Published in Bloomberg
By: Daryna Krasnolutska and Ellen Pinchuk

Ukrainian former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, running second in opinion polls before Sept. 30 elections, is concerned her two main rivals will form a coalition and thwart her ambitions of heading the government again.

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's Regions of Ukraine party had a 10 percentage-point lead over Timoshenko's political alliance, while President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine was a further 10 points behind.

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Published in the Kyiv Post

With just over two weeks left before Ukraine’s snap parliamentary election, the top candidates to head the next government are focused as much on wooing Western investors as they are on winning over rank-and-file voters.

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s Regions party and the bloc of fiery opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko (Byut) are expected to come in first and second in the elections respectively, just as they did last year.

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Published in Kyiv Post
By: Yulia Tymoshenko

Not so a long ago, Rinat Akhmetov threatened to hire clever American experts and draft a plan of development for Ukraine for the next 20-30 years.

According to the plan, (which I read on the Internet), it was supposed to be, at the very least, a “Marshall Plan for Ukraine.”

However, whether marshals have ended somewhere there, beyond the ocean, or something even worse has happened, I don’t know. Except, that instead of a Marshall Plan, they have given us the “Professor's Plan” [reference to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych – Ed. Note] as usual.

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Published in The Kyiv Post
By: Stephen Bandera

The generalized findings of seven leading polling organizations show a month before elections that the Party of Regions led by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is leading the pack of political parties vying for seats in the next parliament with nearly a third of the vote.

But the combined support for the two “Orange forces” – President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc and Yulia Tymoshenko’s Byut – could exceed that of the Regions and their current coalition allies, the Communists and Socialists.

Democratic Initiatives Foundation, an NGO that has received Western funding for exit polls, surveyed the leading Ukrainian sociological services in the first week of September.

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Published in The International Herald Tribune
By: Judy Dempsey

BERLIN: Despite continuing political uncertainty and few economic initiatives since the pro-democratic Orange Revolution of 2004, Ukraine's economy is in surprisingly good shape. Economists credit substantial inflows of foreign investment, a boom in consumer spending and a fairly disciplined monetary and fiscal policies.

But as Ukraine prepares to join the World Trade Organization next year, experts say growth can only be sustained if the next government - which will be elected in 10 days - embarks on an ambitious economic agenda.

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Published in Ukrayinska Pravda

BYuT leader Yulia Tymoshenko is ‘now an increasingly popular politician whom many well-connected Ukrainian tycoons and politicians fear’.

The opinion is held by Roman Olearchyk whose article Orange Revolution heroine scents power has been published in Financial Times news to be referred to by Inopressa.ru website.

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Published by The RAND Corporation
By: Keith Crane, F. Stephen Larrabee

Overview:

Despite the fact that two ostensible economic policy priorities in Ukraine are to liberalize trade and improve the climate for foreign direct investment (FDI), successive Ukrainian governments have found it singularly difficult to pass legislation and implement policies to address these priorities. The study’s primary objective was to analyze Ukraine’s current environment for foreign trade and FDI and to develop policy proposals that will foster Ukraine’s foreign trade and attract more FDI, especially with respect to the United States. Read More...

Published by BYuT UA

BYuT leader Yulia Tymoshenko announced during the signing of a contract with leading foreign that her party will create favorable conditions for foreign investment in Ukraine.

“We will make sure that imported equipment and technology for the development of new businesses are not taxed at the border crossing,” the BYuT leader said.

“They will be entering Ukraine practically tax-free,” she added.

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Published by BYuT UA

Yulia Tymoshenko believes it is necessary to establish special investment zones instead of free economic zones.

The BYuT leader announced this today during her meeting with representatives of 300 leading European companies.

Yulia Tymoshenko noted that the current government’s version of free economic zones had proven to be ineffective. According to her, these policies have destroyed conpetition in Ukraine.

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Published by BYuT UA

Today, during a presentation for foreign investors, Victor Yanukovych made two false statements: first, he announced that Yulia Tymoshenko’s government was dismissed due to corruption and incompetence; second, he stated that the level of foreign investment in Ukraine decreased during Ms. Tymoshenko’s tenure as Prime Minister.

In her response to the media, Ms. Tymoshenko said that such statements are inappropriate for any individual who calls himself Prime Minister. “I do not know what kind of [Paul] Manaforts or whose prompters are preparing these colorful speeches for Yanukovych, but everything he has said lately has been devoid of logic,” Ms. Tymoshenko said.

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Published by BYuT UA

A broad coalition represents a compromise among political clans, which will split the country.

Yulia Tymoshenko made this statement on Monday at a meeting in Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskiy, Kyiv Oblast.

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Published in Financial Times
By: Roman Olearchyk

This year's power struggle between Ukraine's pro-western president and its premier has left many in Brussels, Washington and Moscow wondering who is in charge. They are also asking themselves where Kiev sees its interests as lying - with the west or with its Russian neighbour.

In the confusion, Yulia Tymoshenko, Kiev's charismatic and uncompromising Orange Revolution heroine, has systematically positioned herself as likely to become Ukraine's true political victor.

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KYIV – Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s party (BYuT) launched an international, English-language website to communicate her party’s views on an international basis. www.iBYuT.com is the international BYuT website for information on the party’s platform, members, news, press releases and activities abroad. Ms. Tymoshenko announced the launch of the website Read More...

KYIV - BYuT leader Yulia Tymoshenko presents program to accelerate investment in Ukraine.

The contract presents the platform of policy guidelines which a BYuT government will pursue to encourage increased domestic and foreign direct investment, so as to accelerate Ukraine’s economic development and improve the standard of living for its citizens in a sustainable manner.

The initiative underlines BYuT’s support for a transparent government and economic policies designed to increase investment. It also describes how a BYuT government would execute the policies which were developed with advice from the international community.

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Published in New Europe
By: Kostis Geropoullos

Leonid Kravchuk, Ukraine’s first president after the collapse of the Soviet Union, called upon all the country’s political forces to unite around specific key issues before the crucial parliamentary elections on September 30, 2007, to avoid a repeat of the prolonged political crisis that has troubled Ukraine since the Orange Revolution in 2004.

The political crisis cannot go on indefinitely, he said. “The moment will come that the Ukrainian political forces will understand either they are going to act in the interest of the people, otherwise they will have to go,” Kravchuk told New Europe in the resort town of Marmari on the Greek island of Evia, where he was attending a Ukrainian-Greek forum on September 7.

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Published in REGNUM

As many as six political forces have real chances to enter the Ukrainian Supreme Rada: the regions Party, Yulia Timoshenko’s Bloc (BYT), Our Ukraine – People’s Defense, the Socialist Party, Bloc of Litvin and the Communist Party. The statement was made by head of board of Shevchenko Institute for Political and Sociological Studies  Vladimir Bondarenko at a news conference called “Electoral preferences of the people at the finish of early parliamentary elections 2007.”

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Statement by EPP President Wilfried Martens and EPP-ED Chairman Joseph Daul on the Ukraine general elections of 30 September 2007.

The EPP stresses the great importance of the upcoming general elections for the strengthening of democracy and for the European future of the Ukraine.

The European Union should closely monitor the respect of international democratic standards for free, fair and transparent elections.

For this reason, we all have an obligation to send observers to these elections.

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Published by AFX News Limited

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development issued a highly critical report on Ukraine's economy for 2007, saying economic reforms are lagging behind its neighbours and the growth of recent years is threatened.

In particular a lack of reform is discouraging foreign investment in the ex-Soviet republic, the report said.

'A number of factors that have underpinned growth since 1999 have exhausted, or will soon exhaust, their potential,' the OECD warned.

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Published in UNIAN

The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) begins collecting signatures for a nationwide constitutional referendum.

She stated this in Maidan Nezalezhnosti square during a Sunday meeting of pilot groups on holding a referendum on a new Constitution.

The BYuT leader claimed that the best Ukrainian constitutional lawyers had examined the possibility of holding the referendum bypassing the Central Election Commission (CEC).

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