Kiev: President Viktor Yanukovych’s ruling Regions Party collected the largest number of votes in Ukraine’s parliamentary election Sunday with 28.1 percent, a leading exit poll said after voting closed.

Opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s alliance placed second with 24.7 percent while the UDAR (Punch) group of world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko finished third with 15.1 percent, a copy of the National Exit Poll by the Democratic Initiative Foundation released to AFP said.

The exit poll, the oldest such in Ukraine, said the ultra-nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) group would place fourth with 12.3 percent of the ballots while the Communist Party would finish fifth with 11.8 percent.

No other party managed to break through the minimum five percent threshold required to make it into parliament on the proportional party list portion of the ballot.

The other half of the 450 deputies in the Verkhovna Rada house of parliament are elected simultaneously in first-past-the-post single-mandate constituencies.

Three other polling agencies released slightly different percentage figures that all showed Yanukovych’s Regions Party in the lead and the pro-Tymoshenko forces second.

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