Unlike the June 4 state of the nation address, Petro Poroshenko put Crimea front and center at his third news conference as president today on June 5.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv outdoors during a breezy, sunny afternoon – ex-President Viktor Yushchenko was last president to venture outside to speak to journalists in 2009 – he said Ukraine will maintain diplomatic pressure to keep sanctions imposed on Russia.
Crimea is a “key priority” and making it a part of Ukraine is an “unbelievably difficult task,” he said, explaining its importance and why he didn’t want to “briefly” mention the peninsula during the state of the nation speech.
“We will do everything to return Crimea to Ukraine,” Poroshenko said.
He stressed that the country will continue working with international allies to maintain sanctions on Russia for taking over the peninsula in March 2014. “It is important not to give Russia a chance to break the world’s pro-Ukrainian coalition,” Poroshenko said.
Repeating what he told parliament the previous day, Poroshenko outlined his goal of distributing administrative powers and functions to regional and local governments, the priority of removing prosecutorial immunity from judges and lawmakers, and having open party lists during elections.
Scheduled for Oct. 25, the local elections would be another test for Ukraine’s democracy. They should stabilize the situation in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, he added. The easternmost region, known as Donbas, will remain a part of Ukraine, he said.
Poroshenko also warned that the number Russian troops positioned in Ukraine and near the country’s border is the highest since August 2014, when one of the bloodiest battles for the strategic city of Ilovaisk took place.
Ukraine’s army was defeated while advancing on the Donetsk Oblast city last summer when thousands of Russian troops, backed by advanced armor and artillery, joined the battle, leading to the first peace agreement in September. Although the Defense Ministry said 108 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, a Newsweek report on the battle stated “hundreds” had died.
Russia started another military offensive two days ago with an assault on the western Donetsk suburb of Maryinka. At least four Ukrainian servicemen were killed in the battle. Poroshenko cited the attack –complete with Russians using banned tanks, artillery and multiple-rocket launch systems, as additional evidence that Russia is violating the second peace deal brokered in February.
The president said he would do everything possible to accelerate the process of deploying peacekeepers to Donbas.
“A United Nations support office will be opened in Ukraine and their first task will be to study the possibility of deploying peacekeepers,” Poroshenko said.
He also addressed his critics.
He continues to own the Roshen confectionary factory, his largest asset, and a number of other companies in violation of Ukraine’s constitution. Poroshenko said he will transfer his share in Roshen to a trust with Rothschild, a private financial advisory group.
He hired Rothschild to search for potential buyers as well, and the group conducting legal and financial due diligence on his assets. There are obstacles to selling his assets in Russia as the country seized the property of his confectionary factory in Lipetsk.
Poroshenko brushed off the accusations on existing agreements with businessman Dmytro Firtash after he met him and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko in Vienna before the presidential election in 2014.
As reported, Firtash said during a court hearing in Vienna on April 30 on his extradition to the U.S. that he met with Poroshenko and Vitali Klitschko on the eve of the 2014 presidential election, and that the meeting was his idea and was aimed at preventing the presidency of Batkivschyna Party Leader Yulia Tymoshenko.
“I never denied a brief meeting with Firtash during the presidential election campaign,” Poroshenko says. “But I absolutely deny that there are any confidential agreements disclosed by Firtash. They does not exist,” he said.
Poroshenko also promised to monitor an ambitious construction project started in early September that aims to tighten security along the Russian border, which stretches along 2,295 kilometers.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has said defensive structures will include ditches, test-track lanes, vehicle-barrier trenches and optical surveillance towers to detect troop and vehicle movement from the Russian side.
The results so far of the construction weren’t “satisfactory,” according to Poroshenko. However, he said that the project was revised and the problems have been taken into account.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].
