Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party is leading the polls in Ukraine with 11.2%, according to a poll conducted by two leading Kyiv think-tanks. Fatherland is a pro-EU populist party and styles itself as the real opposition.

The Poroshenko Bloc, the president’s eponymous party, would earn 9.3% of those likely to vote, while the Russian-oriented Opposition Bloc would earn 8.4%. The pro-EU, reform-oriented Civic Position party led by former Defense Minister Anatoliy Grytsenko would earn 8.3%.

The Russia-oriented For Life party led by media mogul Vadym Rabinovych would earn 7.7%, the populist Radical Party led by Oleh Liashko would earn 7.3% and the pro-EU, Self-Reliance party led by Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi would earn 5.8%.

More than 48% of respondents want early parliamentary elections to be held.

“It’s remarkable that the poll ratings of Poroshenko and his party are as low, if not lower, than any sitting Ukrainian president, yet not a single group of leaders in the country’s political elite has been able to put together any significant opposition force,” Zenon Zawada of Concorde Capital said in a note. “This is partly due to the president’s harsh tactics against political rivals, as demonstrated with the recent decision to strip Mikheil Saakashvili of his citizenship.”

As bne reported, the president also succeeded in depressing public support for Sadovyi's Self-Reliance party with the garbage scandal in the city of Lviv.

“Yet the lack of an opposition force is also related to the moral bankruptcy of Ukraine’s elite, which has failed to produce a single political party that is trusted and supported by the public in 25 years of Ukrainian independence,” Zawada added.

The Fatherland party scored political points on its campaign against the IMF demand to launch the farmland market in Ukraine. Ukraine is among the world’s few countries forbidding the trade of farmland.

Tymoshenko is on pace to become the leading opposition force to Poroshenko in the 2019 elections. While it will continue to hammer the government on the poor economic conditions, it remains to be seen whether it will gradually adopt an appeasement position with Russia to attract eastern and southern Ukrainian voters. It’s worth noting that the Russian-oriented electorate has risen from previous polls to over 16% with the emergence of the For Life party (compared to 41.9% for pro-Western parties).