Is 'Chocolate King' What Ukrainians Fought For?
Updated: 11:51am UK, Monday 26 May 2014
By Katie Stallard, Sky Correspondent, in Donetsk
According to the national exit poll and the man himself, Ukraine has a new president.
Self-made billionaire Petro Poroshenko - the man they call the "chocolate king" - has declared himself the winner.
Yulia Tymoshenko conceded gracefully, if emotionally, in defeat.
Mr Poroshenko says his first priority is end war and bring peace.
To that end, his first official visit as president will be to the Donbas region in the east.
But he also said he has ruled out negotiations with separatists until they lay down weapons.
None of those we have spoken to here have any intention of doing so.
They burned ballot papers with Molotov cocktails in front of our camera on Sunday to make their point - as far as they are concerned this new president is illegitimate.
They do not recognise his authority, nor do they adhere to his demands.
And there are plenty of other people here not occupying buildings or burning ballots, but who feel the authorities in Kiev mean nothing and do nothing for them.
Uniting Ukraine might make for good campaigning rhetoric, but it's easier promised in a stump speech than delivered in real life.
There will also be questions about whether Mr Poroshenko is what those on the Maidan (the local name for the uprising on Kiev's Independence Square) fought for.
They didn't just want new politicians - they wanted a whole new politics, and the end of the influence of the oligarchy on those in power.
What they have got is one of the richest men in Ukraine, and a man who has been involved in national politics, on and off, and on both sides, for much of the last two decades.
Add to that the parlous state of the national finances, the austerity measures the International Monetary Fund is likely to insist are imposed very shortly, and the massive hike in the Russian gas price, and there are troubled economic times ahead.
Mr Poroshenko's election slogan was: "Live in a new way" - people here are expecting life to get better, not worse.
But this election does formalise what happened on the Maidan this winter; no longer can it be said that an unelected, self-appointed government has seized power by force.
Whatever the separatists in the east and Russian television channels might say, millions and millions of Ukrainians have voted for a new president, and a man who has promised them a new European future.
It is an overwhelming endorsement of the demands of those who rallied on the Maidan demanding a move away from this country's Soviet past, towards Europe and the west.
There are many long difficult days ahead, but this presidential election is a start and a significant moment in the modern history of Ukraine.
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