Kyiv, May 28, 2014.<\/b> With more than 54% of Ukrainians casting their votes for Petro Poroshenko in the early Presidential elections, the Kremlin\u2019s myth of \u201cseparated Ukraine\u201d has been disproven. \u00a0Andrei Illarionov, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in the US and former economic adviser to President Putin, observed that Ukrainians’ overwhelming preference for a pro-Western candidate negates Putin\u2019s theory of a Ukraine that is divided along east-west lines, and that his theory cannot withstand any formal and legal argument.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most important result of the Ukrainian Presidential elections is not that P.Poroshenko was elected as a President. And it is not that for the very first time Ukrainian President was elected in the first round. And not even the fact that Y.Tymoshenko suffered a serious defeat […]. The most important result of yesterday’s Presidential elections is the formal and legal death of Putin’s myth of the so-called \u201cbreakup\u201d of Ukraine for the west-central and south-eastern parts [\u2026]. This is the funeral of Putin\u2019s plan to separate Ukraine.\u201d states Andrei Illarionov in his blog for Echo of Moscow<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Remarkably, President-elect Poroshenko received votes from all regions of the country. \u00a0In these elections residents of western regions of the country did not vote differently from those in the east. According to election results, the top four candidates, all of whom represent the political west and the center of the country (Petro Poroshenko, Yulia Tymoshenko, Oleh Lyashko, and Anatoliy Hrytsenko), together received approximately 83% of all votes. This indicates that a striking majority of Ukrainians are opting for a European path of development and for a unified country.<\/p>\n
In contrast, the poor results of candidates with an \u2018eastern\u2019 orientation \u2013 Sergiy Tihipko (4.8%) and Mykhaylo Dobkin (2.1%) \u2013 demonstrate how few Ukrainians are choosing to follow Putin\u2019s scenario for the country. In these elections, Ukraine demonstrated that it has not become a “Bandera state” or an anti-Russian state, but merely a country that has become anti-Putin, concludes Andrei Illarionov. Russia’s relentless propaganda about a divided Ukraine with a Russian-speaking east that would like to join Russia cannot withstand the tide of striking unity that has been displayed by Ukrainians in the pre-term presidential election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"