The director of the CIS-EMO observation mission for the parliamentary elections in Ukraine, Alexei Kochetkov, has said that the election campaign in the country is being held in line with democratic standards, despite the current violations related to candidates running for MP in single-seat constituencies.

"We see competition and choice and, most importantly, as in a proper election, the winner has not yet been determined. The elections in Ukraine meet all of the criteria for democratic elections. The number of some violations is lower or greater, but this is due to the fact that the system is mixed. Previously, it might be a little better when the parties competed with each other. There were no such wild things as fighting between candidates," he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.

He said that if the elections of 2004 and 2012 are compared, they differ in the same way, as Ukrainian citizens have changed over this period.

"I personally did not see any worsening. For example, PACE representative Gross [the head of the observation mission, Andreas Gross], immediately said on the first day of his arrival in Ukraine that there was no democracy and freedom of speech in the country, nothing, only fear and disaster… We cannot see that," Kochetkov said.

In its second report, the CIS-EMO mission concluded that violations in the elections of people's deputies of Ukraine exist, but they are mainly related to the activities of parliamentary candidates running in single-seat districts.