The Solidarity and the UDAR parties have reached a preliminary agreement to join their forces during local elections due this fall, Petro Poroshenko Bloc's parliamentary faction leader Yuri Lutsenko has said.
“These talks have been completed, we are in fact planning, after Independence Day, to hold a congress of the Petro Poroshenko Solidarity Bloc, where a final decision will be made about the parties’ merger and joining our forces for elections both in Kyiv and across Ukraine,” Lutsenko said on the Vesti radio on Aug. 17.
A candidate for the Kyiv Mayor will be nominated by the Petro Poroshenko Solidarity Bloc; likewise, candidates from the UDAR led by Vitali Klitschko, who is currently the mayor of Kyiv, will be put forward in other Ukrainian regions, Lutsenko said.
When asked whether the UDAR will cease to exist as a legal entity after the merger, Lutsenko said: “In the long run, yes, but in the Ukrainian realities it is a long process. Nevertheless, we have agreed to see each other as a whole, as one political force,” the faction leader said.
He did not rule that the party could change its name in future.
Lutsenko also said that Solidarity continues merger talks with other political forces, including with the People’s Front Party.
