‘Chocolate King’ Ukraine’s New President

Local Editor

The billionaire confectioner Petro Poroshenko, known as Ukraine's "Chocolate King", claimed victory in the Ukraine presidential election on Sunday.

Preliminary results with almost 25 percent of votes counted gave Poroshenko 54.1 percent and Ukraine former premier Tymoshenko 13.1.

Results will be announced on Monday.
Poroshenko declared "All the polls show that the election has been completed in one round and the country has a new president."

His first priority was to travel to the east of the country to end "war and chaos" caused by armed pro-Russian separatists.
Authorities stated that only about 20% of the polling stations in the heavily industrialized, Russian-speaking Donetsk region, which has 3.3 million registered voters,.
"None were open in the city of Donetsk," it added.

Pro-Russians had tried to block voting in some eastern areas, including the self-declared People's Republic of Donetsk.

The incomplete nature of voting in the east raised concerns about the poll's legitimacy.
In recent days, Russian troops have started moving away from the Ukrainian border, calming fears of an imminent invasion. However, for many voters in the east, where there is still considerable nostalgia for the days of the Soviet Union, there is no particularly representative candidate.

Interim Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk urged Ukrainians to hand the new president a strong mandate to forge closer ties with the European Union and move Ukraine away from a "grey zone of lawlessness and dark forces that dream of suffocating us and into a place where it is easier to breathe".

President Barack Obama said the election was another step towards unifying the country, and that the US looked forward to working with its new president when the result was confirmed.
His Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin stated that he will respect the poll results.

Sources: News Agencies, Edited by website team