Staunton, May 26 – The “most significant result” of the Ukrainian presidential elections was not the selection of Petro Poroshenko, his victory in the first round, or the defeat of Yuliya Tymoshenko but rather “the formal-legal death of the Putin myth about the so-called ‘split’ of Ukraine into a West-Central and South-Eastern part,” Andrey Illarionov say.
As such, the Russian commentator says, the vote effectively represents “the funeral of Putin’s plan for the division of Ukraine, the final completion of the 20-year period of ‘Ukrainianization, [and] an important stage on the path to the Westernization and Europeanization of Ukraine.”
In this Ukrainian election, in contrast to earlier presidential votes there, the winner was not someone who won the most votes in the west but lost the east or who won the east but lost the west. “For the first time, the president of Ukraine was chosen by the votes of all Ukraine, by the votes of the residents of all major Ukrainian macro-regions.”
Even more, Illarionov says, the three trailing candidates received approximately the same level of support in the two regions, something that represents “the absolute victory of the national choice by Ukrainian citizens” of the entire country “of the western variant of development of a united Ukraine.”
“In other words,” he continues, the Ukrainian election has led to the “total collapse of Putin’s plans” for that country. Ukraine “did not become Banderite or anti-Russian Federation or anti-Russian,” but that country, and indeed “practically” all of it, however, “has become anti-Putin” and seeks “integration in the western, that is, the contemporary world.”