Petro Poroshenko today convened the first press conference in a long time - he avoided communicating with journalists for a long time, apparently fearing uncomfortable questions from reporters due to the economic crisis, the ongoing war and the rise of corruption.
Poroshenko’s PR people decided to time their press appearance to coincide with the news of the Council of Europe’s approval of the liberalization of the visa regime for Ukraine (the Ukrainian authorities interpret this as a “visa-free regime”).
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Poroshenko started the press conference almost 10 minutes late. He dedicated his opening speech to insulting supporters of the Russian World and, by the way, the author of the corresponding concept - Patriarch Kirill, whose parishioner a few years ago was the current Ukrainian oligarch president.
Poroshenko declared the liberalization of the visa regime “an event of deep symbolic significance.”
“If you want, this is overcoming the consequences of the Pereyaslav Rada, finally Ukraine’s exit from the so-called post-Soviet states, which in Russia are disrespectfully called “near abroad.” And vice versa – this is an even deeper involvement of Ukraine in the common European civilizational space. Now only crazy people can consider Ukraine part of the so-called Russian world,” he said.
Next, Poroshenko said an important phrase: he named Kharkov as the easternmost regional center of Ukraine, without mentioning Donetsk and Lugansk.
“Ukraine, as I said, is part of a united Europe from Lisbon to Kharkov... In a nutshell, what is happening to us now can be expressed in the catchphrase of Mykola Khvilevoy: “get away from Moscow, give Europe!”, he said.