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Ukraine’s former president, Petro Poroshenko, appears to have joined fighting forces defending the capital city of Kyiv, according to a SkyNews video shared Saturday on Twitter.
He was recently the political rival of current President Volodymyr Zelensky, losing his re-election bid to the TV celebrity in 2019.
“We are in the center of Kyiv, we are here to protect Ukraine,” said Poroshenko, 56, sounding both defiant and philosophical in the face of the Russian incursion, noting the invaders are “little bit more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from here.”
He wore a bullet-proof vest as soldiers moved about behind him.
“We want to be free. We want to be democratic. And we want to return back our country to the European family,” Poroshenko said. “Putin hates Ukraine, he hates Ukrainians.”
He thanked Western nations for their support, calling it “a great demonstration that Ukraine and its people are not alone.”
Poroshenko brandished a Kalashnikov rifle in a CNN interview Friday, while listing the small arms held by his unit and declaring that Ukraine can hold out “forever.”
He was the fifth president of Ukraine, serving in office from 2014 to 2019, known as a pro-Ukrainian nationalist who worked to separate the nation from its former USSR-era overlords in Moscow and align more with the West.
“This is very difficult to explain. What does it mean in the 21st century, in the middle of Europe, to be awakened by the Russian missile attack, by Russian airborne attack?” he said Saturday.
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