Ukraine’s interim government promised a clean presidential election today that would anchor the former Soviet state in the Western camp and show the world it would not be intimidated by Russia after weeks of violence.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday he would respect the choice of the Ukrainian people and would work with the new authorities. Moscow wanted stability, he said.
In the eastern region where at least 20 people have been killed in the past few days, pro-Moscow separatists said yesterday they did not recognise a vote organised by authorities in Kiev they say took power in a Western-backed coup and officials said many electoral districts would be out of action.
Electoral officials in the east were setting up polling stations but fearful of violence which may keep people at home.
That could dent what the government hopes will be a massive nationwide turnout to give a mandate for closer ties with the EU and force Moscow to deal with a Kiev leadership that took power three months ago when the elected president fled to Russia.
Having annexed Crimea in March on the grounds of protecting ethnic Russians from Ukrainian “fascists”, Putin said Russia wanted a new Constitution – something Kiev sees as a means to break the country up by handing more autonomy than it is willing to concede to Russian-speaking regions in the east.
“By all means, we will respect the choice of the Ukrainian people and will be working with authorities formed on the basis of this election,” Putin told foreign journalists during an international economic forum in St Petersburg.
Western powers have threatened further sanctions if Moscow impedes the ballot and Putin acknowledged on Friday that US and EU measures were hurting the Russian economy.
Polls show almost certain victory, possibly outright in the first round, for confectionery magnate Petro Poroshenko, a former government minister who backed the pro-Western Maidan protests that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych in February.
Former premier Yulia Tymo-shenko, also a supporter of closer ties to the EU, is a distant second but is the favourite to contest a runoff if Poroshenko – who is 48 and widely known as the ‘chocolate king’ – fails to pass 50 per cent today.
Western-backed Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk told Ukrainians they had a responsibility to vote and assured those in the east whose ability to vote was being hampered by “the war against Ukraine” that they would soon be free of “bandits”.
“Tomorrow we will demonstrate to the whole world, but above all to ourselves, that we cannot be intimidated,” Yatseniuk said in a televised statement.
He avoided mention of any candidate – campaigning is banned until voting ends. But he said he was sure the winner would make a priority of signing up to a closer alliance with the EU – a move which Yanukovych rejected in November, triggering months of protests in Kiev that ended when he fled the country.
We will show the whole world that we cannot be intimidated
Saying the new president’s first visit would be to Brussels to sign a free trade deal with the EU, Yatseniuk said:
“The newly elected president will receive from the Ukrainian people a mandate for a determined and unstoppable movement away from the grey zone of lawlessness and dark forces that dream of suffocating us and into an area of free people, rallied around common values – to a place where it is easier to breathe.”
Many Ukrainians, especially in the east where businesses trade with Russia and fear competition from the West, are wary of opening up the economy to the EU, though many in the nation of 45 million would like to be able to travel freely in Europe.
Putin, whom critics say is bent on restoring Moscow’s Soviet empire, is keen to bring the second most populous republic of the former USSR into a trading bloc with Russia. The tug-of-war over Ukraine has created the gravest crisis in East-West relations since the end of the Cold War more than 20 years ago.