Volodymyr Zelensky has won the runoff presidential election in Ukraine with 73.22% of the vote and has been elected president, the Ukrainian Central Elections Commission (CEC) said in a statement on Tuesday. CEC Chairperson Tetiana Slipachuk read out the final ballot protocol at the Tuesday ceremony where the official election results were announced, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent said in a report.
According to the CEC, the fifth Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko got 24.45% of the vote in the April 21 election.
CEC members reported the results of voting from all regions of Ukraine and foreign countries at the meeting.
According to Slipachuk, the CEC was informed by appeal courts that they had had no complaints regarding the runoff election left as of 9 a.m. on April 30.
The final protocol was approved and signed by all CEC members but Iryna Yefremova, who is absent for good reason, Slipachuk said. Following this, the protocol was signed by representatives of both presidential candidates.
The runoff presidential election in Ukraine took place on April 21. The voter turnout stood at 61.37%, including in the foreign electoral district. As many as 18,491,840 out of 29,645,358 eligible voters cast ballots.
The leader of the Batkivschyna Party, MP Yulia Tymoshenko is convinced that the idea to revise the powers of the president proposed in the draft law initiated by Samopomich contradicts the Constitution. “In my opinion, the bill proposed by Samopomich contradicts the Constitution. In addition, the country was bored with political intrigue, dragging of power and attempts to change the rules during the game. People are waiting for changes in their lives, actions and results,” Tymoshenko said on Facebook. According to her, the powers of the president are clearly defined by the Constitution. And we must allow the elected head of state to do his job, she added.
Ukrainian and Belarusian diplomats have agreed to facilitate preparations for the second Forum of Regions to be held in Zhytomyr in October 2019. Such an agreement was reached during political consultations between Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vasyl Bodnar and First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus Andrei Yeudachenka, the press service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.
In addition, an agreement was reached on preparing for signing the plan of consultations between the foreign ministries of Ukraine and Belarus for 2020-2021.
As reported, the first Forum of Regions of Ukraine and Belarus was held in Gomel on October 26, 2018. It was attended by the presidents of the countries, Petro Poroshenko and Alexander Lukashenko. They decided to hold the second forum in Zhytomyr.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he does not rule out the possibility of a meeting and talks with Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky.
“If we meet someday, begin some talks, and I’m not ruling this out, then we must talk how to end the conflict in southeastern Ukraine in the first place,” Putin said at press conference following his visit to China.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Zelensky has already made a statement before the election that he, firstly, is not going to sign a decree on a bill on amnesty and, secondly, [is not going] to grant special status to those territories [certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine],” Putin said.
“Both are the key elements of the content of the Minsk Agreements and how can the issue of the LPR and the DPR be resolved without implementing the Minsk Agreements?” the Russian president said.
“I would gladly ask him these question, discuss these matters with him,” Putin said.
Mentioning that the majority of Ukrainian citizens voted for Zelensky, the Russian president expressed the opinion that “first and foremost, the people expect the future Ukrainian political leadership to resolve these issues.”
“Everyone is fed up with this conflict, everyone is tired of it, and everyone expects this from the new political leadership, including the future president,” Putin said.
“But if from the very threshold, from the start the future president says he is not going to implement the Minsk Agreements, how will he resolve this issue then? I would be glad to discuss that with him, I would like to understand his stance,” the Russian president said.
The team of President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky (Ze!Team) is discussing a possible change in the leadership of the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and the institutional strengthening of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).
“Today, a detailed action plan in terms of anti-corruption policy is at the stage of finalization. The Zelensky team has a clear agreement on the need to reset the National Agency on Corruption Protection (NACP). There is a very serious discussion on resetting the leadership of the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO),” Halyna Yanchenko, a Ze!Team advisor on anti-corruption policy and digitalization, said on Facebook on Friday.
As for NABU, according to her, most of the team of the newly elected president “considers it necessary to support and strengthen NABU institutionally.”
“I also stand in these positions personally. Moreover, the plan for the first 100 days of the future president discusses the initiative to grant NABU the right to independently wiretap [only the SBU can do this now] from communication channels, a step the experts have advocated for a long time,” she said.
The deficit of the national budget of Ukraine in January-March 2019 amounted to UAH 26.166 billion, in particular the general fund deficit was UAH 39.272 billion with the target being UAH 43.54 billion, according to data released by the State Treasury Service.
According to the agency, government borrowing for the three months of 2019 amounted to UAH 115.3 billion, while debt repayment almost UAH 94.3 billion.
Earlier, the Ministry of Finance reported that the national budget deficit for this period was financed mainly by public borrowing.
Privatization brought almost UAH 184 million with the expected figures for this period exceeding UAH 6 billion.
In general, the national budget for this period received UAH 210.6 billion in revenues, with general fund income being UAH 178.2 billion and the target standing at UAH 194.15 billion.
National budget expenditures in January-March this year were at the level of UAH 237.4 billion, including UAH 218.2 billion in the general fund, with the plan being UAH 239.3 billion.
According to the treasury, local budgets during this period posted a surplus of UAH 17.2 billion, and the surplus of the general fund was UAH 19.4 billion.
