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TEHRAN, May 20 - Ukrainian TV star Volodymyr Zelenskiy was sworn in Monday as the country's new president, promised to stop the war in the east against Russian-backed separatists and immediately dissolved parliament, which he has branded as a group only interested in self-enrichment.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Zelenskiy won 73% of the vote last month in a landslide victory that reflected Ukrainians' exhaustion with widespread corruption and the country's political elite. Even before he disbanded the Supreme Rada, which had been one of his campaign promises, the 41-year-old Zelenskiy upended other Ukrainian political traditions Monday.
He ditched the idea of a traditional motorcade to his inauguration, walking to parliament in the capital of Kiev through a park packed with people. Flanked by four bodyguards, the beaming president-elect gave high-fives to some spectators, even stopping to take a selfie with one of them.
After he was sworn in but before he moved to dissolve parliament, Zelenskiy asked the Supreme Rada to adopt a bill against illegal enrichment and support his motions to fire the country's defense minister, the head of the Ukrainian Security Service and the Prosecutor General. All of them are allies of former President Petro Poroshenko, who lost the election to the comedian with no previous political experience but who played the Ukrainian president on a popular TV show for years.
Defense Ministry Stepan Poltorak promptly published his letter of resignation on Facebook.
In a feisty speech after his inauguration, Zelenskiy told the Rada that his main goal for the presidency is to bring peace to eastern Ukraine, where government troops have been fighting Russia-backed separatists for five years in a conflict that has left at least 13,000 dead.
"I'm ready to do everything so that our heroes don't die there," he said. "It wasn't us who started that war. But we need to be the one to finish it."
Source: AP
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