KIEV: Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire chocolate manufacturer, claimed the Ukrainian presidency with an emphatic election victory on Sunday, taking on a fraught mission to quell pro-Russian rebels and steer his fragile nation closer to the West.
A veteran survivor of Ukraine’s feuding political class who threw his weight and money behind the revolt that brought down his Moscow-backed predecessor three months ago, the burly 48-year-old won more than 50 per cent in preliminary results, against just 13 per cent for his closest challenger.
The robust margin gives him a firm mandate, even though millions of Ukrainians were unable to vote in eastern regions prowled by armed pro-Moscow separatists.
Full results will not be announced until Monday, but runner-up Yulia Tymoshenko made clear she would concede, sparing the country a tense three-week wait for a runoff round.
Preliminary results with about 50 per cent of votes counted gave Poroshenko 53.7 per cent and former premier Tymoshenko 13.1.
Poroshenko, known as the “Chocolate King”, has no time to lose to make good on pledges to end fighting with separatists in the Russian-speaking east, negotiate a stable new relationship with Moscow and rescue an economy sapped by months of chaos and 23 years of corrupt post-Soviet mismanagement.
The size of his victory reflects in part Ukrainians rallying behind the frontrunner in the hope of ending a political vacuum that Russian President Vladimir Putin exploited. Since March, Moscow has annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and offered solidarity – and maybe more concrete support – to rebels in the east who want to break with Kiev and accept Russian rule.
“He has taken a heavy burden on his shoulders,” said Larisa, a schoolteacher who was among crowds watching the results on Independence Square, where pro-Western “EuroMaidan” protests ended in bloodshed in February that prompted President Viktor Yanukovich to flee to Russia. “I just want all of this to be over. I think that’s what everybody wants.”
In the eastern Donbass coalfield, where militants shut polling stations cutting off some 10 per cent of the national electorate from the vote, rebels scoffed at the “fascist junta” and announced a plan to cleanse their “people’s republic” of “enemy troops”.
A minister in Kiev said in turn its forces would renew their “anti-terrorist operation” after a truce during the polling.
More than 20 people were killed in the region last week. (Reuters)
