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Eastern Europe
March 29, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
Ukrainian president narrowing gap with Zelensky on eve of election day, new survey says
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has nar- rowed the gap for the lead in the presidential election polls, according to results of the latest survey published by Kyiv-based Razumkov Center on March 27.
Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a close associ- ate of the nation's oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, has 24.8% support among decided voters, compared to 22.1% for Poroshenko and 14.8% of those polled backing ex-PM Yulia Tymoshenko.
About 14.6% remain undecided. In a second- round run-off, Zelenskiy would earn 36.5% compared to 22.7% for Poroshenko. The poll was conducted between March 21 and 26 among 2,017 respondents.
Zenon Zawada at Kyiv-based brokerage Concorde Capital believes that Poroshenko has a solid chance to be re-elected, regardless of Zelenskiy’s wide lead in the polls.
"He has a latent electorate, as well as the ability to draw support from undecided voters," Zawada wrote in a note on March 28. "These poll results will help Poroshenko on two particular fronts: dismissing Tymoshenko’s inevitable claims of vote fraud after the first round, and countering Zelen- skiy’s claims of vote fraud (inevitable, if he loses) after the second round."
On March 27, Ukraine's rock star and prominent pub- lic figure Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, who has refused to run for a presidential post in 2019, published a power- ful appeal to the nation, which was widely recognized as urging Ukrainians not to vote for Zelensky.
"[The presidential] election is not a prank. [...] Vote responsibly. Vote not as a joke. [...] Freedom is not an escapade. It requires responsibility, not sarcastic indifference. Changes are not by chance. They require persistence, not impatience. And finally victory is not personal ambition. It requires a reliable team, not random people gathered around hype," he wrote in his statement.
Russia's Gazprom seeks to finish its $500mn flagship construction project in Belarus by late 2020
Russia's state-controlled gas company Gazprom is going to finish the construction of a new $500mn office complex for its local subsidiary
in Minsk by late 2020.
According to the subsidiary's director general Vladimir Mayorov, the project had run into geo- logical complications.
In 2017, the construction was suspended also due to Minsk's $726.2mn debt for gas previously
supplied by Gazprom. Gazprom had planned to construct the 182-metre-high office building for Gazprom Transgaz Belarus as part of a multifunctional complex including sports and healthcare centres, and other public premises.
The Italian company Codest is the general contractor for building of the centre. Gazprom Transgaz Belarus is the investor and the customer of the civil engineering project.