U.S. State Department 'Looks Forward' To Working With New Ukrainian Government
By RFE/RL
WASHINGTON – The U.S. State Department said it looks forward to working with a new Ukrainian government after the political party of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy won an outright victory in the July 21 parliamentary elections.
In a congratulatory statement, the State Department said it “will work with the new Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people as they advance reforms critical to ensuring Ukraine’s success.”
Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party won 60 percent of the available 424 seats, the first time in the country’s postindependence history that a single party received a solid majority.
The outcome further highlighted the public’s rejection of Ukraine’s established political order.
Altogether, at least 320 elected members – more than three-quarters – have never served in parliament.
One-in-5 are women, the highest ever, with 87 getting elected.
Zelenskiy now has a strong mandate to move ahead with reforms to establish the rule of law and clamp down on corruption. He still must contend with a smoldering conflict against Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that is in its sixth year.
“The United States maintains its unwavering support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression,” the State Department said.
Russia denies leading, training, equipping, or fighting beside the separatists in the easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Zelenskiy is expected to visit U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington later this summer.
For prime minister, the Ukrainian president said he wants an economist who has never held a top political post.
“I believe this person must be a professional economist," Zelenskiy said after casting his ballot on July 21.
"I would like this person to be absolutely independent and have never been prime minister, speaker, or leader of any [parliamentary] faction,” he said.
Zelenskiy also said that his party won’t form a ruling coalition with another party.
He has already met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, and held a phone discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The State Department concluded its statement by saying: “We continue to stand with the people of Ukraine as they build a strong, successful, democratic country, secure within its internationally recognized borders."
Closing the live blog for the day. See you again tomorrow.
Latest from our news desk:
Russia's Supreme Court has upheld a six-year prison sentence given to 20-year-old Ukrainian national Pavlo Hryb.
The North Caucasus Regional Court on March 22 convicted Hryb of "promoting terrorism," a charge he contends was fabricated by the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Hryb’s lawyers appealed the verdict, but in a ruling on July 23 the Supreme Court said it found no grounds to reverse the ruling.
Hryb’s father, Ihor Hryb, condemned the March verdict as a “death sentence for Pavlo...who needs an urgent medical operation in order to live.”
Ukraine denounced the verdict, calling it "unlawful," and Hryb announced a hunger strike to protest the ruling as well as his treatment in jail.
Hryb said he had been "denied medical treatment" while in custody.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry demanded the "immediate reversal of the unlawful sentence" and called for Hryb's "release and unimpeded return to Ukraine."
Hryb went missing in August 2017 after he traveled to Belarus to meet a woman he met online.
Relatives believe he walked into a trap set by the FSB, which later told Ukraine that Hryb was being held in a detention center in Russia on suspicion of promoting terrorism.
Ihor Hryb said that his son was detained when he was returning from Belarus to Ukraine.