Submitted by Nadia Bazuk…
In spring, Ukraine witnessed an event that will surely be written down in the country’s history – the presidential elections were won by Volodymyr Zelensky, a showman who had never been involved in politics before. And as Zelensky’s victory is astonishing so Petro Poroshenko’s defeat is unexpected. It delivered a hard blow not only at his reputation as politician but also at his ego.
Authored by Tom Luongo:
Change is now possible in Ukraine. The conflict between it and Russia has been frozen for nearly five years thanks to former President Petro Poroshenko.
He’s gone. Volodmyr Zelensky is in power along with Zelensky’s political party which won close to a clear majority in Verkovna Rada elections recently.
Submitted by Nadia Bazuk…
The recent presidential elections in Ukraine ended quite unexpectedly – the comedian Volodymyr Zelensky whose bid for presidency hadn’t been taken seriously by experts and voters in early 2019, defeated Petro Poroshenko and won a landslide victory. The margin between the two candidates was stunning (72.7% to 28.2%), and the only region where Poroshenko earned the majority of votes was Lviv region. In the neighboring Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, more than 40% of voters supported the former president.
A recent newspiece on OrthoChristian.com, the representative news site of the Moscow Patriarchate, reported that “Patriarch” Philaret Denisenko, the decades-long leader of the “Kyiv Patriarchate” of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, refused to sign a document pledging fealty to the statutes of the newly formed “Church” structure presently known as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).
The US sent Energy Secretary Rick Perry to the inauguration of the new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to announce the sanctions bill on Gazprom’s Nordstream 2 pipeline would pass.
I can’t tell what’s more pathetic at this point, the neocons in Trump’s administration thinking that sanctions actually achieve their goals or using them to suck up to a new president they don’t actively control yet.
The ordinary Ukrainian people are so sick and tired of the militaristic nationalism as well as endemic corruption in Kiev that they voted for someone, anyone, who appears slightly more reasonable.
The stunning victory of TV funny man Vladimir Zelensky in Ukraine’s presidential elections has tempted notions of a new opportunity to resolve the conflict in eastern Donbas region. The ongoing war has crippled the entire country, caused over 13,000 deaths and resulted in nearly one million people displaced from their homes.
The incalculable damage that’s been done to the region for cynical geopolitical goals can never be undone but it can stop.
With art imitating life presidential elections in Ukraine ended with Volodymyr Zelenski garnering a massive majority over incumbent Petro Poroshenko. So, let’s get right to the point.
Will this change anything?
In the post-Soviet period, US foreign policy and media establishments have overhyped Ukrainian positives, while disproportionately highlighting the negatives in Russia and Belarus, Michael Averko writes.
Among Western foreign policy establishment elites, a growing realism has developed on the shortcomings evident in Ukraine. This reality partly explains the somewhat limited Western mass media coverage of the just completed Ukrainian presidential election, when compared to the ones that brought Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko to power.
