“I am leaving office, but I want to firmly underline that I am not leaving politics,” the incumbent president said after exit polls gave Volodymyr Zelensky a decisive lead.
In the Ukrainian elections, it has been reported that incumbent President Petro Poroshenko is accepting defeat for the country’s highest office.
The AP has reported that an exit poll from Ukraine’s presidential election is giving Jewish comedian Volodymyr Zelensky – who plays a high school teacher ranting about government corruption who is elected president on a TV series – a commanding lead over Poroshenko.
Results from the exit poll released Sunday after voting stations closed showed Zelensky receiving 73.2% of the nationwide vote; Poroshenko got 25.3%, according to the AP report.
The poll, conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology and the Razumkov Center public opinion organization, was based on more than 13,000 responses to face-to-face questions at 300 polling places as of 6 p.m., two hours before the polls closed, as was reported by the AP.
The poll claims a margin of error of three percentage points.
Shortly after the poll results were published, Poroshenko said he was willing to help his rival transition into the presidency.
“I am leaving office, but I want to firmly underline that I am not leaving politics,” Poroshenko said.
The comedian is a political neophyte and has no background or experience in affairs of state and has offered few detailed policies.
Reuters reported that Poroshenko tried to rally Ukrainians around the flag by casting himself as a bulwark against Russian aggression and a champion of Ukrainian identity.
Zelenskiy was born in 1978 to Jewish parents and seems set to become Ukraine’s first Jewish president. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman is also Jewish, as was reported by Reuters.
Declaring victory at his campaign headquarters to emotional supporters, Zelenskiy promised he would not let the Ukrainian people down.
“I’m not yet officially the president, but as a citizen of Ukraine, I can say to all countries in the post-Soviet Union look at us. Anything is possible!”
European Council President Donald Tusk congratulated Zelenskiy, as did French President Emmanuel Macron and British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt, as was reported by Reuters.
Zelenskiy, whose victory fits a pattern of anti-establishment figures unseating incumbents in Europe and further afield, has promised to end the war in the eastern Donbass region and to root out corruption amid widespread dismay over rising prices and sliding living standards.
But he has been coy about exactly how he plans to achieve all that and investors want reassurances that he will accelerate reforms needed to attract foreign investment and keep the country in an International Monetary Fund program.
