Partial results from the Ukrainian elections showed the electoral blocs of Prime Minister Areniy Yatsenyuk and President Petro Poroshenko neck and neck for first place, with 21.6 and 21.5 per cent of the vote respectively.

Mr Yatsenyuk’s Popular Front and the Poroshenko Bloc share a pro-EU and pro-Nato ideology and are likely to form the basis of a grand coalition to push through deregulation of public services and privatisation.

Both parties plan to scrap price controls on essentials and restructure the economy in line with EU demands, with the eventual aim of joining the capitalist club.

They may also need the support of the western Ukrainian Samopomich party, which came third with 11 per cent of the votes counted so far. It promotes “Christian morality” but otherwise shares the others’ neoliberal policies.

Full results will not be available for some days, since parliament is divided into seats elected from party lists and less predictable single-seat constituencies.

Critics attacked the ballot as flawed, noting that areas of eastern Ukraine where fighting is ongoing were unable to vote, skewing the result in favour of the parties which supported the February coup d’etat against Viktor Yanukovych which are strongest in the west.

The best showing for the opposition came from the Opposition Bloc, which has attracted many former supporters of Mr Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. It had won 9.8 per cent of the vote yesterday.

The Communist Party (CPU) was hampered by the exclusion of its traditional strongholds and the harassment and intimidation of its activists, and looked unlikely to gain the 5 per cent minimum to gain list representation.

“The new government launched a campaign to ban communist ideology,” CPU leader Petro Symonenko said. “I think our voters were intimidated.”

It was still unclear whether the fascist Svoboda party would enter parliament, with it polling 4.64 per cent yesterday. The even more extreme neonazi Right Sector, which has provided many of the vigilantes being deployed against anti-fascist resistance forces in eastern Ukraine, was well short of 5 per cent but seemed likely to win some constituency seats, with leader Dmytro Yarosh in the lead for his seat in the Dnepropetrovsk region.