OREANDA-NEWS. The Central Election Commission of Ukraine processed more than 50 % of protocols. The showman Volodimyr Zelensky who has collected 30.2 % of the votes leads the race.

The second place has been occupied by the incumbent Ukrainian President, one of the richest men in a country Petro Poroshenko with 16.6 %.

A former prime minister and now a head of the Batkivshchina (Fatherland) political party Yulia Tymoshenko has become third with a result of 13.0 % of the votes. A former vice-prime-minister Yuriy Boyko has polled 11.5 %, ex-minister of defense Anatoly Gritsenko has got 7.1 % of the votes of electors.

A voter turnout is about 63 % in an electorate of 30 million people.

A half of votes is necessary to win the first round outright. It is evident that none of candidates has got this quantity, and most probably, the two candidates who will enter the second round of voting on April 21 are already known.

The two leaders have already commented the voting trying to sort of hurt each other.

“I want to thank all Ukrainians who voted today not just for kicks,” said Zelensky, answering Poroshenko’s statement saying the incumbent national president alone should be taken seriously. “This is only the first step toward a great victory”.

Poroshenko said that the time for jokes was over and that Zelensky would make just the kind of weak president who will be convenient for President of Russia Vladimir Putin, the evil genius of many Ukrainian politics. In Poroshenko’s electoral headquarters they said that they are confident of a victory of the incumbent President in the second round.

Robert Brinkley, a former British ambassador to Ukraine and now a chairman of the Ukrainian Institute in London, said about Volodymyr Zelensky: “He is doing well because there is a widespread mood in Ukraine of alienation from politicians and the political class”, and added that such a reasoning is not unique to Ukrainian nation.