MOSCOW, October 27. /TASS/. Ukraine’s new Verkhovna Rada (parliament) will be strongly influenced by radical forces, Tamara Guzenkova, a deputy director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies /RISS/, a thinktank, and head of the RISS centre for problems of the former Soviet republics, said.
“One of specifics of the Ukrainian parliament is that even if it has few representatives of armed groups and radical nationalists, they will all the same exert rather big influence on the balance of political forces in the Rada and ultimately on its work,” she said. “The matter is that such radicals are present in various parties: in Oleg Lyashko’s Radical Party, in /President/ Pyotr Poroshenko’s force, and in others. The current Ukrainian authorities simply have to reckon with these forces, for at the moment they have physical force, weapons, combat experience. They cannot be disregarded and not reckoned with, because they can take up arms at any moment and this is a real threat.”
“Moreover, the parliament is another venue for Ukraine’s traditional political game, when big businessmen are seeking to put eggs into several different baskets,” she noted. “For instance, bloody governor of the Dnepropetrovsk region, Igor Kolomoisky, might have from 30 to 40 bayonets scattered in various political blocs and factions in the Rada. So, first, the parliament will have to consider their proposals, and, second, they will play a major role as re-transmitters of messages from Kolomoisky and other businessmen. And a threat of their resorting to the military resource at any moment will be hanging as a sword of Damocles over the rest of lawmakers in the Rada.