The top two candidates in Sunday’s presidential poll, a comedian and a senior politician, will face each other in a runoff on April 21, Ukraine’s election authority said Thursday.
SECOND ROUND IN THE VOTE
Vladimir Zelenskiy, who has played the president on a popular TV show, got 30.24 percent of the vote, while Petro Poroshenko, the country’s current actual president, got about half of that,15.95 percent, according to the country’s Central Election Commission. As no candidate got 50 percent of the vote, with all the votes counted, the nation’s next president will be chosen in a runoff.
On Sunday, former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko came in third with 13.40 percent, opposition leader Yuriy Boyko was fourth with 11.67 percent, and former Defense Minister Anatoly Gritsenko was fifth with 6.91 percent.
Commenting on the results, Timoshenko criticized both Zelenskiy and Poroshenko, saying neither can address Ukraine’s problems, but declined to appeal the vote results and pledged to help whoever wins.
Since pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych left office in February 2014, Ukraine has faced a host of problems, including Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in March and a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, near the border with Russia.
