New Ukrainian leader prepares to take power, vowing peace in eastern Ukraine
Fight for airport in eastern Ukraine continues; president-elect calls rebels ‘pirates’
(about 7 hours later)
KIEV, Ukraine – Ukrainian billionaire Petro Poroshenko prepared to take over as Ukraine’s leader Monday, vowing to end hostilities in the east with Moscow’s cooperation, as pro-Russian separatists fought gun battles with Ukrainian forces at Donetsk’s international airport.
DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian security forces and rebels continued to battle Monday night for this city’s airport hours after president-elect Petro Poroshenko promised in Kiev to unite his country, a pledge that appeared no closer to reality one day after the billionaire won office.
As Poroshenko, 48, was speaking at a press conference in Kiev, heavy fighting between separatists and Ukrainian forces around Donetsk International Airport forced local police to seal off the main road to the airport after the airport was closed Monday morning. There were two bursts of machine-gun fire from the direction of the terminal just after 1 p.m. followed by heavy fighting.
Poroshenko, who made his fortune in chocolate, must now guide his divided nation through a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine that has created the greatest tension between the West and Russia since the Cold War.
Ukrainian military helicopters flew overhead.
On Monday, he vowed to push hard against the separatists, whom he called “Somali pirates,” saying security operations should be swift and powerful against the rebels in Ukraine’s Donets Basin, known colloquially as Donbas.
The separatists prevented millions of people from voting in most parts of troubled eastern Ukraine, shuttering polling stations, stealing ballots and threatening, and even kidnapping, elections officials.
“Their goal is to turn Donbas into Somalia, and I will never allow such things to happen in my country,” Poroshenko, 48, told reporters. But he also held out an olive branch to the industrial region by saying elections should take place there to give citizens a measure of local control.
Poroshenko faces the immediate, huge task of trying to stem a separatist rebellion in the east of the country that has created the greatest tension between the West and Russia since the Cold War. He has said that his first official act will be to visit the heart of the rebellion in the industrial Donets Basin.
It was unclear late Monday who was in control of Donetsk International Airport, where a firefight broke out earlier in the day when Ukrainian forces and helicopters moved in, hours after armed pro-Russia militants seized the terminal. Shots were still ringing out in the area.
Speaking at a press conference Monday in Kiev, Poroshenko, 48, one of the country’s biggest tycoons, said he plans talks with Moscow during the first half of June. He said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin “know each other quite well.”
The rebels took the airport sometime before 7 a.m., when the airport’s Web site announced its closure and the cancellation of flights without explaining why. Local police set up a roadblock at the intersection of the airport access road and Vzlyotnaya Boulevard, about six miles from the city center.
“Russia is our biggest neighbor,” Poroshenko said. “Stopping the war and bringing stability to all Ukraine, bringing peace to eastern Ukraine, that would be impossible” without Russia.
Shortly after 1 p.m., four Ukrainian helicopters flew over the treetops near the airport, and within minutes, machine-gun fire erupted west of the terminal. Heavy explosives were heard nearby, especially to the east, where black smoke billowed from the vicinity of a large shopping plaza. Military jets flew overhead, dropping chaff to counter possible antiaircraft missiles.
Putin has said he will “cooperate” with the new authorities in Kiev.
As police fled the checkpoint, a minivan pulled up with about six armed militants in fatigues, flak jackets and masks, who began moving toward the airport. The shooting became more chaotic as some gunmen hid in trees across from a Lexus car dealership, while antiaircraft fire and machine-gun volleys sounded in the vicinity of the commercial airport’s radar array.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters in Moscow on Monday that Russia will “respect the will expressed by the Ukrainian people.”
The fighting rose and fell in intensity until about 4:30 p.m., with bullets snapping through the trees and among the homes of a residential neighborhood south of the airport, when more helicopters swooped in. Rebels hiding in the trees fired at a helicopter, and two
“We, as our president said repeatedly, are ready for a dialogue with Kyiv representatives, ready for a dialogue with Petro Poroshenko,” he told a press conference in Moscow, according to the Interfax news agency.
Ukrainian gunships returned moments later, with one of them diving down to rain fire into the wooded area.
Poroshenko, who was speaking a day after the country handed him a commanding victory in its presidential election, said the Ukrainian people were waiting for “these results” and that with every day of delay, “Ukraine pays a huge price.”
There was a lull in the fighting near the airport at about 4:30. Local news outlets reported that passengers and employees were partially evacuated from the building, and train service was temporarily interrupted. One body was seen lying near the railway station.
Exit polls show Poroshenko won some 55% of the vote Sunday, not having to resort to a second round of voting. Turn-out appeared to be high everywhere except the embattled east. Final results were expected Monday.
Yet even during the fighting, , some residents walked by casually,
International election observers praised Sunday’s elections in a preliminary statement Monday, saying they were characterized by high turn-out and a “clear resolve by the authorities to hold what was a genuine election largely in line with international commitments and that respected fundamental freedoms, despite the hostile security environment in two eastern regions of the country.”
occasionally taking cover behind a tree. One young boy came to take pictures with his cellphone until police shouted at him to go away. The extent of casualties was not immediately clear.
Election monitors were not present in restive eastern regions, where pro-Russian separatists prevented most people from voting.
Poroshenko, one of the country’s wealthiest tycoons, has said that his first official act will be to visit the heart of the rebellion in Donbas, where violence or the threat of it prevented millions of people from voting Sunday.
The statement came from the OSCE, the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe, which sent monitors to Ukraine’s elections. Joao Soares, the special coordinator who led the short-term OSCE observer mission to Ukraine, said Ukrainian authorities should be commended for their efforts under extraordinary circumstances.
Poroshenko said he also plans talks with Moscow next month. He said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin “know each other quite well,” while Putin has said he will cooperate with the new authorities in Kiev.
Earlier this month, the separatists declared autonomous regions in Donetsk and Luhansk after holding chaotic referendums there that showed a majority of voters wanting some form of self-rule in the regions.
“Russia is our biggest neighbor,” Poroshenko said. “Stopping the war and bringing stability to all Ukraine, bringing peace to eastern Ukraine, that would be impossible” without Russia.”
Even though millions of voters did not get to cast their votes in eastern Ukraine, the election was hailed as a success by the West.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters in Moscow on Monday that Russia will “respect the will expressed by the Ukrainian people.” He also said Russia is ready for a dialogue with Poroshenko and the government in Kiev, the Interfax news agency reported.
The poll, which will likely determine the future make-up of the country, was “a huge victory for the people of Ukraine,” U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, told theBBC. He said that although voting was severely disrupted in the east, “significant polling” took place in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which had been rocked by violent clashes.
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry praised Sunday’s voting, noting that international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe viewed them as a demonstration of the interim government’s “clear resolve” to conduct a fair election.
The U.S. diplomat welcomed Poroshenko’s announcement that he will travel to the heart of the rebellion.
“The large turnout sends a clear message: the Ukrainian people want to live in a united, democratic and peaceful Ukraine anchored in European institutions,” Kerry said in a written statement.
The new leader takes the office once held by pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in February after anti-government protests. That revolt led to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, and the torrent of violence that increasingly looked like a low-grade civil war.
Exit polls showed that Poroshenko captured about 55 percent of the vote Sunday, enough to win outright without a second round of balloting. Turnout appeared to be high everywhere except in the embattled east. The Central Election Commission estimated that 60 percent of registered voters cast ballots nationwide, a spokesman said. A regional breakdown was not immediately available, but 14 percent of the country’s registered voters live in the two eastern regions where voting was impeded Sunday.
Poroshenko has also said he wants to lead Ukraine to closer ties with the European Union.
Poroshenko’s election came three months after massive protests forced former president Viktor Yanukovych to flee. Since his ouster, Russia has annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and violence in eastern Ukraine has escalated into near-civil war.
The Central Election Commission estimated final voter turnout nationwide at 60 percent, a spokesman said. Turnout in the 2010 election — in which residents of eastern Ukraine and Crimea could vote freely — was 67 percent. A regional breakdown of the final turnout figures was not immediately available, but 14 percent of the country’s registered voters live in the two eastern regions were voting was impeded Sunday.
Poroshenko is a soft-spoken businessman who built a candy empire out of the ashes of Ukraine’s post-Soviet economy. He has worked on both sides of the country’s political divide, as foreign minister during the pro-Western presidency of Viktor Yushchenko and briefly as economy minister under Yanukovych. But Poroshenko allied himself with protesters shortly after Yanukovych rejected a deal in November to move toward integration with the European Union.
Poroshenko, 48, is a soft-spoken businessman who built a candy empire out of the ashes of Ukraine’s post-Soviet economy. Forbes estimates his wealth at $1.3 billion. He has worked on both sides of the country’s political divide, as foreign minister during the pro-Western presidency of Viktor Yushchenko and briefly as economy minister under Yanukovych. But Poroshenko allied himself with protesters shortly after Yanukovych rejected a deal in November to move toward integration with the European Union.
In a symbolic attempt to move beyond the turmoil that has gripped Ukraine since the demonstrations began, Kiev mayor-elect Vitali Klitshchko said Monday that it was time to clear Independence Square. Protesters have remained camped in the Maidan, as the square is known, transforming it into a sprawling tent city crisscrossed by barricades of scrap metal and tires.
Many of the anti-corruption civil society groups that occupied Kiev’s Independence Square in opposition to Yanukovich fear that the country’s new president could be an old-style representative of rule by Ukraine’s wealthiest.
The presence of the Maidan encampments has been a goad to separatists, who have seized several government buildings and set up barricades in eastern Ukraine and now accuse the Kiev government of a double standard.
Poroshenko said Sunday that he wants to hold new parliamentary elections this year, a move that would pave the way for a full revamp of the government. Yanukovich’s pro-Russian Party of Regions still holds a plurality of seats in the legislature.
Birnbaum reported from Kiev. Anastasiia Fedosova in Donetsk, Daniela Deane in London and Abigail Hauslohner in Moscow contributed to this report.
Problems beyond the capital
In Kiev on Sunday, voters stood in long lines as they waited to fill out the large paper ballots for president. Many said they were choosing Poroshenko as a conciliatory figure.
Poroshenko “is the one person who is actually neutral,” said Alexander Stelmakh, 36, a construction worker who came with his 3-year-old son to vote at School No. 15 in the leafy Holoseevsky neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.
But in Ukraine’s troubled east, problems with voting were widespread, and pro-Russian separatists attacked polling places, according to the office of Donetsk’s governor, Serhiy Taruta. Only 426 polling stations out of 2,430 were open in the region, and none in the city of Donetsk, which has 1 million residents, the Donetsk Regional Administration said.
There were difficulties even in areas nominally under government control. Sunday morning, people started trickling into a polling station in Veliko Novoselovka, a town where Ukrainian troops backed by armored personnel carriers operated a roadblock along the highway leading to Donetsk, 60 miles east. A second roadblock was just outside town.
But voters were initially turned away because of a lack of ballots. The district’s top election official had been abducted Saturday and the ballots stolen, said the election official in charge of the polling station, who would give his name only as Oleksandr. By mid-afternoon, ballots arrived under army escort. But officials were still numbering and affixing official stamps to them more than three hours later, and no one in town had been able to vote.
“We very much wanted to vote. We want to end this disorder,” said one woman, a retired schoolteacher with tears in her eyes who gave only her first name, Tatyana.
In Krasnoarmiisk, a town 30 miles northwest of Donetsk, voting proceeded normally at School No. 9, but with only about 10 percent turnout, Natalyia Tyrhaninova, the head of the district election commission, said late Sunday.
Violence continues
The latest violence Sunday was a reminder of the challenges facing Ukraine’s new leader. One man was killed and another wounded in a skirmish near the town of Novoaidar, Deputy Interior Minister Serhiy Yarovoi told reporters, without giving details. Interfax reported that the victims were separatists. In Mariupol, a special police unit apprehended top separatist leader Denis Kuzmenko and killed one of his bodyguards, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement.
Also Sunday, the deaths of Italian photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli, 30, and his Russian interpreter, Andrei Mironov, 60, were confirmed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The group said the two were killed the previous day by mortar fire near the rebel-held city of Slovyansk, but the exact circumstances remain unclear. Mironov, a former dissident who was imprisoned during the waning years of the Soviet Union, was a longtime fixture in Moscow’s journalism community and worked for many Western news outlets there, including The Washington Post.
Birnbaum reported from Kiev, Kunkle from Donetsk and Daniela Deane from London. Abigail Hauslohner contributed from Moscow.
