KIEV, May 26. /ITAR-TASS/. Kiev will use legal instruments in a bid to get Crimea back, Petro Poroshenko who leads the presidential election in Ukraine after more than 60% of ballot papers have been counted, told a news conference on Monday.

“The Ukrainian government will use all possible levers”, primarily legal ones in the international courts, said Poroshenko. Kiev, he added, was ready to go to the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to assert its rights.

On the election day, May 25, Poroshenko said his two principal positions in the relations between Ukraine and Russia were non-recognition of Crimea’s accession to Russia and self-determination referendums in eastern Ukraine. However, he added, his first visit as president would be exactly to the coal-mining region of Donbass in Ukraine's east where the Donetsk and Luhansk regions voted for independence.

Poroshenko said he would like to meet with the Russian leadership early next month. He said that settling the situation in Ukraine’s southeast would be impossible without Moscow. “Russia is our biggest neighbor,” Poroshenko stressed.

 

Punitive operation in Ukraine's south-east

Poroshenko also said he does not intend to stop the use of force in the south-east of the country. 

Poroshenko also stressed that Kiev would not conduct negotiations with armed people. “They don’t want to talk to anybody,” he described the position of the people that are protesting with arms against the current Kiev regime that came to power as a result of a coup.

Poroshenko also pledged that the army operation would be conducted more effectively. In particular, Ukrainian troops will get better equipment, their life and health will be insured, he added.