Viktor gets his man

Sixty-two-year-old Azarov, a staunch ally of the president, replaces Yanukovych's bitter rival Yuliya Tymoshenko who was ousted in a no-confidence vote last week.

Azarov’s candidacy was agreed by a new ruling coalition formed from the president’s Party of Regions, allied with Communists and a bloc lead by parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn. This leaves the formerly powerful Tymoshenko out in the cold.

Speaking shortly before his appointment, Azarov said his predecessor “left the country in a shambles” and announced that his cabinet had the recipe to lead Ukraine out of economic crisis.

“The country has been plundered, the coffers are empty, state debt has tripled”, Azarov, a one-time finance minister, told the parliament.

He vowed to present a new budget in a month's time, which he and most of the country hope will win a thumbs up from the International Monetary Fund. Ukraine badly needs the IMF to restart suspended payments, so it can repay $5.5 billion of domestic debt by the end of this year.

Mr Azarov is known to favour close ties with Moscow and backs the idea of joining a common economic zone with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The opposition, which is critical of the new prime minister's poor command of Ukrainian (he was born in Russia and has lived in Ukraine only since 1984), was quick to recall the hardships experienced by the people back when he was finance minister in 2002-2004. “People did not receive their wages and pensions for months and had no electricity for days on end”, Oleh Liasko from Yuliya Tymoshenko’s bloc pointed out.

The new ruling coalition, which Lytvyn described as the coalition of “stability and reform”, has 235 deputies - just over the required parliamentary majority of 226 votes. Making the most of a change to the law passed last week, the coalition's majority is dependent on a number of independent MPs - something analysts argue may prove a weakness in the long run.