Kiev: Pro-Western and nationalist parties were on course on Monday for a crushing Ukrainian election win, boosting President Petro Poroshenko's bid to merge his country with Europe and make peace with pro-Russian rebels.
Early results and exit polls indicated overwhelming support for Poroshenko's drive to break his war-torn country out of Russia's orbit despite the painful economic measures the Kremlin has levied on its western neighbour in reprisal.
Many in Kiev and the West blame the six-month uprising in the east of the country, that has claimed 3,700 lives, on Russian President Vladimir Putin's effort to destabilise Ukraine's new government and create a "frozen conflict" in its vital rustbelt.
But parties with links to Moscow or the old Viktor Yanukovych regime that was ousted after his abrupt rejection in February of a landmark EU pact were routed at the ballot boxes yesterday.
"I want the war to end and for out country to join the European Union, although I doubt this will happen very soon," pensioner Bogdan Golobutskiy said as he trudged up to a Kiev polling station on a chilly but sunny morning.
Radicals that rejected Poroshenko's peace deal with the insurgents that offered them limited autonomy also had a poor showing -- as did corruption-tainted politicians who had steered Ukraine through two decades of stuttering reforms.
Analysts said it was almost certain that Poroshenko will have to share power with Yatsenyuk as premier.
"Voters did not want a monopoly of power in one pair of hands," said Vadym Karasyov of Kiev's Institute of Global Strategies. "They voted for a Poroshenko-Yatsenyuk tandem."
A buoyant Poroshenko said, in nationally televised comments, said "more than three quarters of voters who took part in the polls gave strong and irreversible backing to Ukraine's path to Europe,"
The 49-year-old chocolate baron said a majority also supported his search for "political methods" to end the war in the country's industrial east.
Results with 10 per cent of the precincts reporting showed Poroshenko's group with 21.9 per cent of the votes. The People's Front was a very close second with 21.6 per cent.
Exit polls earlier showed the president's Petro Poroshenko Bloc leading with 23 per cent of the vote.
Trailing a few fractions of a percentage point behind him was the People's Front led by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk -- a more nationalist leader instrumental in Ukraine's urgent loan negotiations with the West.
The two parties are thus within striking distance of the majority needed to form a moderate government that could pursue similar policies to those both back now.
