Big win for Ukraine’s president

Zelensky’s party captures a majority in parliament, but he faces challenges in enacting his agenda.

KIEV, Ukraine — The anti-corruption party of Ukraine’s new president has won a commanding majority of seats in the national parliament, near-complete election results showed Tuesday, giving him leverage to try to enact his promised reforms.

The national election commission reported Tuesday that with 98% of ballots counted, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party had 43% of the vote for the 225 seats in parliament that are allocated proportionally. Party candidates also led in races for 176 of the 199 parliament seats being chosen in individual constituencies.

The election commission said a Russia-friendly party led by tycoon Viktor Medvedchuk, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was in second place in Sunday’s nationwide vote with 13% support and picked up 19 individual seats.

Zelensky, who took office in May, has promised to tackle Ukraine’s entrenched corruption. He also faces the challenges of trying to end the 5-year-old war with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 13,000 people and of trying to raise Ukrainians’ poor living standards.

The head of the president’s party, Dmytro Razumkov, said key measures to be taken up when the new Verkhovna Rada, as the parliament is known, convenes will include removing national lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution, establishing procedures for presidential impeachment and creating anti-corruption agencies that are independent from both the president and parliament.

Zelensky won office in a landslide against former President Petro Poroshenko.

His victory and the parliament election results reflect Ukrainians’ frustration with their political establishment as the country has endured war, disorder, the loss of Crimea to Russia and economic decline.