Ukrainians Back Poroshenko To Find Way Out Of Crisis

[Purveyor]

By Richard Balmforth and Alastair Macdonald
KIEV Sun May 25, 2014 7:40pm EDT

(Reuters) - 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 55 percent in exit polls on a first-round ballot marred by the reality that millions were unable to vote in the troubled eastern regions.

Results will not be announced until Monday but runner-up Yulia Tymoshenko, on 13 percent, made clear she would concede, sparing the country a tense three weeks until a runoff round.

Poroshenko, known as the "Chocolate King", has no time to lose to make good on pledges to end "war" 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 post-Soviet mismanagement and chronic corruption.

The size of his victory reflects in part Ukrainians rallying behind the front-runner in the hope of ending a political vacuum that Russian President Vladimir Putin has exploited to annex the Crimea peninsula and offer solidarity, and maybe more, to rebels in the east who want to break with Kiev and accept Russian rule.

more...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/25/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA4M05420140525

[newthinking]

1. What is most telling? The West voted heavily- Not for the parties of the Junta. We were told they

represented the people right?
I wonder when the bandera supporting propagandists will admit they were wrong or have been had? They did a terrible disservice to the Ukrainian people and the way that people in Ukraine have been dehuminized by what essentially has turned out to be an extremist junta.

[1000words]

2. With a 1%er at the helm and voting irregularities ...

they're as "democratic" as the U.S., already.

[LittleBlue]

3. What a spectacular failure

The media won't admit it, though. Kick out the old corrupt government and... elect the Chocolate King?

Remind me again what the average citizen of Ukraine has gained by this