© Reuters / Valentyn OgirenkoUkrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine on April 21, 2019.
Comedian-turned-politician Volodymyr Zelensky, set for a landslide win in Ukraine's presidential vote, stayed true to character at his first press conference, dropping some flashy promises but refusing to go into boring detail.
Shortly after claiming electoral victory, Zelensky held a Q&A session with reporters at his campaign HQ in a Kiev business center. While the official results of the elections have yet to be announced, multiple exit polls suggest he secured more than 72 percent of votes.
Zelensky addressed the media in an easy-going manner.
He spoke in a mix of Ukrainian and Russian, switching between the two languages, sometimes in one sentence. He also talked English a bit. But if the press hoped to shed light on the policies of the incoming president and his team, the conference actually generated more questions than answers.
Bringing the civil war in eastern Ukraine to an end appears to be one of the top priorities for Zelensky. Promising to announce some kind of a plan shortly, he asked the reporters for help in the upcoming "infowar" that he says would help end the conflict, which, since 2014, has been raging between Kiev's troops and the rebel self-proclaimed republics.
We will launch a very powerful information war to end the war in Donbass.
He then vowed to "act within the Normandy format," referring to the French-German-Russian-Ukrainian talks on war in Donbass, saying that "we will continue the Minsk process, we will restart it."
Comment: Zelensky received over
73% of the vote (with 75% of the ballots counted so far), close to 50 points ahead of Poroshenkso. He received
congratulations from the U.S. and various European leaders hoping to continue their good relations with Ukraine. As for Russia, here are some
initial responses:
The landslide defeat is a clear result of the policies pursued by Poroshenko during his term, chief of the State Duma's foreign relations committee Leonid Slutsky has said, adding that neither his "foreign handlers" or his "anti-Russian provocations" had helped him to get re-elected. He cautioned, however, that it's a bit too early to form a full opinion about the political rookie Zelensky, suggesting a wait for his first steps in office.
...
"With all the understanding of how the world works behind the scenes, I'll still say: Ukraine can go for a reset. Not in the sense of the redistribution of cash flow from one pocket to another. But a real one, based on the understanding of the need to unite the people, not on the basis of force, but on the basis of a national agenda," Zakharova wrote.
Such a "reset" will ensure that the Ukrainian authorities won't have to "deprive millions of ... citizens from voting," Zakharova added. That was an obvious reference to the Kiev authorities' having decided not to offer electoral participation at any diplomatic facilities in Russia, despite several million Ukrainians working or living in the country.
Russian PM Medvedev had
this to say:
"There is no doubt the new head of state will remain committed to his campaign rhetoric about Russia, repeating the same ideological cliches... I have no illusion about that," Medvedev wrote on his VK social media page.
He expressed hope, however, that there is "a chance to improve cooperation" between Russia and Ukraine, if the new leadership uses "common sense" and a "pragmatic and responsible approach" that takes into account political realities in Ukraine.
Comment: See also: