KIEV, October 30 (Itar-Tass) — Leader of Ukraine's Svoboda nationalist party Oleg Tyagnibok threatened large protest actions in case of election fraud. He issued the warning at a news conference on Tuesday.
"Judging by what is happening at the final stretch, we do not rule out that the authorities will force us to make that move /protests/, but so far, we've been struggling with parliamentary methods and legal methods to keep our votes," Tyagnibok said adding that "we do not rule out more radical and resolute moves."
Svoboda has an accord with the Batkivshchina Opposition Party on jointly urging citizens to take part in rallies to protect the election results. "We've agreed with Batkivshchina on this account," Tyagnibok underlined.
The nationalist leader claimed ordinary people had come up to him in the street to express their readiness to rally.
On Tuesday afternoon, the CEC said the Opposition leads in 16 regions on party lists, while the Party of Regions won 12 majority constituencies.
Batkivshchina took lead in the Vinnitsa, Volyn, Zhitomir, Ivano-Frankovsk, Kirovograd, Kiev, Poltava, Rovno, Sumy, Ternopol, Khmelnitsky, Cherkassy, Chernovtsy, and Chernigov regions and in Kiev. In the Lvov region, the Opposition won six districts, and Svoboda leads in another six. The western and central regions have traditionally supported the Opposition or centrist political parties.
Opposition leader, former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko who is serving a 7-year sentence, believes the parliamentary elections were the most dishonest in the entire history of Ukraine's independence.
"Ukraine held the most dishonest election in the whole period of its independence," she said in a statement released by her lawyer Sergei Vlasenko.
In Timoshenko's opinion, recognizing these elections honest and legitimate means to "fully demoralize the Ukrainian nation, i.e. the part of our people who still believes in justice and European choice."
According to the former premier, if she were free now, she would urge Ukrainians to stage "an indefinite civil disobedience campaign."
"But being behind the bars, I cannot call you out into the squares, because I cannot guarantee a peaceful nature and high level of organization of such actions," the ex premier empathized, "so I'm doing what I can do under such conditions: I'm announcing a hunger strike in protest against election fraud and illegality of this parliament. I know and hope that a majority of Ukrainians will support me."