People walk past a pre-election poster with a portrait of Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, leader of the People's Front, in Kiev on Friday. Ukrainians will take part in an early parliamentary election on Sunday.
AFP/Kiev
Ukraine wraps up campaigning on Friday for a weekend vote that will dramatically reshape parliament after a year of upheavals, as the deadly conflict with pro-Russian rebels drags on into its seventh month.
Sunday's snap poll was called by President Petro Poroshenko in August with the aim of purging parliament of corrupt lawmakers tied to the old regime of Viktor Yanukovych, ousted in February after a wave of bloody protests.
While Poroshenko may succeed in creating a pro-Western coalition in parliament, he is falling short of his other aim of bringing the separatist regions back to Kiev's orbit.
Ukraine had 36.5mn voters, but lost about 1.8mn after Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula in March.
Close to three million others live in separatist-controlled areas of Lugansk and Donetsk regions, where insurgent leaders are boycotting the polls and holding their own votes a week later.
Kiev has nevertheless vowed to organise polling stations in government-controlled areas of the rebellious east, with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk promising to ensure security on election day.
"It's difficult to hold elections in a country that has seen military aggression from Russia," Yatsenyuk said on Thursday, warning that anyone seeking to disrupt the process will be punished.
"The choice should be made not with a gun but with a ballot," he added.
Poroshenko hoped to be able to form a pro-European coalition in parliament to enact reforms and rebuild Ukraine's economy despite the insurgency in the country's coal and steel belt.
"If we build a new strong economy, a country without corruption... we will live a new life," he said.
"We will form a new pro-European coalition without lies and populism, and Ukraine will be an honest and efficient state."
He said the coalition will immediately begin to modernise the economy - notoriously corrupt and burdened by a cumbersome tax system - to meet the demands of international lenders behind a $27bn rescue deal aimed at averting bankruptcy.
The president's eponymous Petro Poroshenko Bloc is leading in opinion polls with about 30%.
However, he is not likely to command a majority in the 450-seat parliament and will need to ally with nationalist forces such as wild card radical Oleg Lyashko whose party has been polling on 13%.
Kiev and the rebels signed a Moscow-backed truce on September 5 but the deal has not stopped the hostilities over the past seven weeks, with both sides blaming each other for civilian deaths.
More than 3,700 people have been killed in the conflict since April, according to UN figures, and at least 824,000 displaced.
Kiev and the West have blamed Moscow for stirring the insurgency and sending troops across the border - large parts of which Ukraine no longer controls - but the Kremlin vehemently denies the claims.
