President-elect Poroshenko makes his first remarks after Ukraine’s landmark elections. English subtitles available via close captioning, and translation available below.
Translation by Irena Chalupa:
I think that these elections show strong support for three most important things.
First, more than 90% of those who voted, firmly support a united Ukraine, not a federated, but a unitary state which has been demonstrated today and has received a note of confidence from the Ukrainian people. I want to thank you for this because this is an important basic principle of my presidential program.
Second, 85% of Ukrainians support Ukraine’s European objective and today the realization of this European direction, the European aspirations of Ukraine is extremely important and all branches of power should be guided in their activity by this decisive will of the Ukrainian people. Again, for this I want to thank you from my heart.
Third, and extremely important. I want to thank the residents of Crimea, thousands of Crimeans who in extremely difficult circumstances, traveled from Crimea, did everything possible to vote and voted to support our European choice. I want to thank those thousands, hundreds of thousands of Donbas residents, who in these circumstances where voting was very risky to their health and dangerous to their lives, still took part in voting. Today we can say absolutely firmly and convincingly: the entire country voted. These are the entire country’s elections, this is the election of the president by the whole country. Thank you very much for this.