Poroshenko sworn in with Ukraine facing civil war: AFP
Picture: AFP
Kyiv. Western-backed tycoon Petro Poroshenko vowed Saturday to avert civil war and mend ties with Russia after being sworn in as Ukraine’s fifth post-Soviet president with the nation facing disintegration and economic collapse, AFP reports.
Poroshenko took the oath of office one day after holding his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin since a May 25 election victory entrusted him with stemming a bloody crisis that has shaken the post-Cold War order and redrawn Europe’s map. The 48-year-old candy magnate – dubbed the “chocolate king” – first asked a packed session of parliament to observe a minute of silence for the 100 people killed in three days of a brutal crackdown in Kyiv that led to the February ouster of Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed regime. The self-made billionaire then vowed to grant amnesty to any insurgents who had “no blood on their hands” as the first step in a peace initiative designed to save the nation of 46 million – whose Crimea peninsula was annexed by Russia in March – from fracturing further along ethnic lines.
“I am assuming the presidency in order to preserve and strengthen Ukraine’s unity,” Poroshenko said in a confident address to parliament that symbolically alternated between Russian and Ukrainian. “The citizens of Ukraine will never feel the blessing of peace and security until we resolve our relations with Russia,” he added. But Poroshenko also said he would never accept Russia’s seizure of Crimea or attempts to divert Ukraine’s pro-European course.
US Secretary of State John Kerry voiced hope that Putin’s first talks with a Ukrainian leader since the Kyiv uprising heralded an easing of the standoff that has also unsettled eastern Europe’s ex-Soviet satellite states. “I hope that in the next few days we can see some steps taken that will reduce the tensions,” Kerry told reporters in France. “I’m confident there are ways forward,” he added. US Vice President Joe Biden attended Poroshenko’s inauguration and the White House said Biden had pledged an additional $48.0 million in assistance aimed at helping the new leader’s team protect Ukraine’s eastern border and reduce its costly dependence on Russian gas imports.
But separatist commanders whom the West accuses Russia of openly backing dismissed Poroshenko’s presidency as illegitimate. “He is the president of another country,” the self-styled prime minister of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency. Separatists in the self-proclaimed “Republic of Lugansk” called on the new Ukrainian president to withdraw his army from the east. “Negotiations cannot begin until the retreat of the occupying troops from our territory,” said the “president” in Lugansk, Valery Bolotov, in a statement to the press.
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