KIEV, July 7 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's pro-Russian Party of Regions on Friday formed a parliament coalition with two other leftist parties and had its leader nominated as prime minister.

The Party of Regions, which won the largest number of votes in a March election, but not enough to form a government on its own, teamed up with the Communist Party and the Socialists following the breakup of an alliance led by the pro-presidential Our Ukraine party.

If his candidacy is approved by President Viktor Yushchenko, Viktor Yanukovych will become Ukraine's next prime minister. Ironically, he was the incumbent president's main challenger in 2004 polls, but lost in a rerun following mass-scale protests against vote rigging, which went down in history as the "orange revolution." He also served as premier under Yushchenko's predecessor, Leonid Kuchma.

The Ukrainian parliament has been locked in talks on a coalition government for more than three months now. Our Ukraine's coalition with the liberal Yulia Tymoshenko bloc and the Socialists collapsed Thursday over the surprise election of Socialist Oleksandr Moroz as parliamentary speaker. President Yushchenko then called for another coalition to be formed so that he would not have to dissolve the assembly.