Zelensky says Ukraine and Russia share only state border, have nothing else in common

KIEV: Ukraine’s President-elect Vladimir Zelensky has said it’s possible to search for a compromise in relations with Russia only when Kiev returns control over the state border.”After any ‘goodbye’ a ‘good day’ will come, for sure. I have been thinking for long about what Ukraine and Russia have “much in common”. The reality is so that after Crimea’s annexation and aggression in Donbass, we have only one thing left in “common” – this is the state border: 2,295 km and 400 meters in “common”. “Russia should return control over each millimeter from the Ukrainian side”, Zelensky wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday.
“Only then we will be able to continue looking for “common ground”, he stressed.

Ukraine’s runoff presidential election was held on April 21. With 100% of the vote counted, showman Vladimir Zelensky, a candidate of the Servant of the People party, won by a landslide with 73.22% of the vote (more than 13.5 mln people backed him). Incumbent Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, who has ruled the country for five years, garnered 24.45%. The new president is due to be sworn in by May 31.

Crimea and Sevastopol adopted declarations of independence on March 11, 2014. They held a referendum on March 16, 2014, in which 96.7% of Crimeans and 95.6% of Sevastopol voters chose to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. The Russian president signed the reunification deals on March 18, 2014. The document was ratified by Russia’s national legislature, the Federal Assembly, on March 21, 2014. Despite the convincing results of the referendum, Kiev refused to recognize Crimea as part of Russia. The United States and the European Union slapped economic sanctions in 2014.