Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko | EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO Poroshenko hobbles on President bloodied but unbowed after Sunday’s local elections.

KIEV — It was meant to be a local election campaign like no other, a scrubbed-up democratic exercise following two years of death and sacrifice. Yet Sunday's vote in Ukraine was a depressing return to type.

There was vote rigging, criminality, dodgy candidates, violence, widespread voter apathy and buckwheat handouts, and one set of elections even had to be canceled after it was “discovered” late in the day that the printers used for producing ballot papers belonged to the oligarch bankrolling one of the candidates.

But as the exit polls trickled in, the president's party could claim a modest win. It was not a complete victory by any means, with big defeats in the east and wins for leading foes. But solid voting across central regions has given Petro Poroshenko a much-needed crutch to hobble on with.

There were dire warnings before the vote: enforced early parliamentary elections, an oligarch-led coup, and the return of a rejuvenated Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s most natural and disruptive politician. But for now, these fears have been played into the long grass.

We do not yet know how Ukraine’s hard-to-reach villages and small towns voted — they are usually Tymoshenko’s heartland — yet it seems clear the elections will not provide the controlling stake she had sought (and expected).

Two weeks earlier, opinion polls suggested that her Fatherland party could even sneak into first place, buoyed by an anti-austerity message. This would have handed Tymoshenko clear momentum and put her in pole position to challenge the country’s president. But exit polls in Sunday's vote suggested Fatherland was doing much worse than anticipated, barely topping 10 percent.

The other potentially rebellious party in coalition, Samupomich (Self Reliance), put in a similarly unconvincing performance, generally falling one or two percentage points short of Fatherland. The party’s leader, Andriy Sadovy, took to the airwaves Sunday night to claim the elections showed that voters had “lost trust in government.”

In reality, the results appear to have assured at least the short-term viability of Poroshenko’s coalition. But against this picture of partial relief are worrying trends for the president.

The rise of the oligarch

The vote for Poroshenko's party was decimated across eastern parts of the country. Two main factors were at play: the country’s unflagging bipolar heritage, and the reemergence of oligarchs as political forces, motivated by the potential loss of power, privileged positions and governmental contracts.

In Kharkiv, Gennady Kernes, the controversial, chameleonic mayor, beat Poroshenko's candidate into a distant second. Kernes is a massively divisive figure: hated by Maidan activists, having supported violent pro-Russian forces in the initial stages of Ukraine’s revolution and counter-revolution; adored by the working classes, credited for having spruced up the city during his five years in power.

To make matters worse for Poroshenko, the bitter defeat in Kharkiv was also a victory for his arch nemesis, the bad man of Ukrainian oligarchy, former Dnipropetrovsk governor Ihor Kolomoisky. A close associate of Kernes, Kolomoisky was the driving force behind a new party for the pro-Russian east, called “Renaissance.”

It did particularly well, attracting 40 percent of the vote in Kharkiv (Poroshenko’s bloc won just 8 percent), with much of its success coming at the expense of the successor to former president Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, Opposition Bloc, which looks to be a spent force.

Kolomoisky invested a lot in these elections. Renaissance was but one color of his exceptionally flexible electoral palette; you might have been forgiven for thinking that whichever way Ukraine voted, they ended up voting for Kolomoisky.

Alongside the pro-Russian Renaissance, he presented Ukrainians with Ukrop (Dill), a new patriotic party which campaigned on a militaristic, anti-Russian message. There were also credible suggestions that he was offering some level of support to Tymoshenko’s campaign — though she has denied this.

In Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s third city, a Kolomoisky man, Borys Filatov, was the first round winner of the mayoral race. Poroshenko’s team apparently became so concerned by the possibility of Filatov's success, they began secretly working with his closest rival, Oleksandr Vikul.

Vikul has his own controversial back story, as a former deputy prime minister under Yanukovych and now a close associate of Rinat Akhmetov, the oligarch who stood alongside Yanukovych until the end. Poroshenko’s association with a man from the old regime is likely to be used against him by adversaries in the months to come.

Good news in Odessa

At the same time, there was some unexpected news for the presidential party in Odessa, where Sasha Borovik, ex-Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili’s Harvard-educated assistant, came from nowhere to challenge for the mayoral position.

The contest was a dirty one, with the election watchdog organization Opora registering violations across the city. Borovik was at one point projected to get 30 percent of the vote, setting up a nervous second round for incumbent Gennady Trukhanov, a body-building ex-soldier and close associate of a man some people call the "godfather of Odessa." First returns, however, suggested Borovik might not have enough votes.

Regardless of the outcome, it was a real statement from Saakashvili’s team, showing them to be highly effective organizers. Getting into the second round is one thing; masterminding a victory would be even more impressive, and a challenge to vested interests in Odessa.

But it is perhaps in Kiev that the most significant effects will be felt.

Sergii Leschenko, a journalist-turned-reforming MP, said he believes Borovik-Saakashvili's success has emboldened the reform agenda in government. “Saakashvili’s agenda will now be thrust into the center of government, and he will have new power in dictating the nature of changes in government,” Leschenko said.

Such changes would no doubt determine the fate of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk — supported by the West but so unpopular he didn’t dare take part in the elections.

Saakashvili, governor of Odessa region, has been highly critical of Yatsenyuk’s government, and there is little love lost between the two. On the eve of the election, Saakashvili told POLITICO that the prime minister “continued to operate a system of shadow governments."

“A consensus has formed within the political class, business and society of the need for big changes at the heart of government," he added.

Ukraine’s parliament reopens next week. While the complete breakdown of government looks to have been avoided, there promises to be some drama before stable politics returns.