Resentful Kiev blames... Russia as Council of Europe chief says Ukraine is not yet sovereign

Kiev suspects Moscow is plotting behind the Council of Europe head, who hailed President Zelensky’s electoral win but warned there’s still a way to go before Ukraine can beat corruption and become, wait for it, a sovereign state.

Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, relayed his praise via Twitter, hailing Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party. Its electoral victory, having declared a crusade on corruption, “creates new hope for Ukraine” but there’s still much to be done, Jagland said.

Building “non-corrupted institutions which people can trust, is the way forward to a sovereign Ukrainian state,” the top European official tweeted.

Jagland’s judgement wasn't warmly embraced in Ukraine. The president’s office has yet to comment on the tweet, but the Foreign Ministry fired back and – unsurprisingly – suggested that Moscow’s hand must have been behind the message.

READ MORE: Zelensky’s party just defeated Ukraine’s pro-war elite. Have they the guts to make peace in Donbass?

“Some [Russian] apprentice at SG’s office just poked fun at his own tendency to utter bloopers because they most certainly know that Ukraine is the sovereign state,” tweeted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya.

During the nationwide election on Sunday, the party garnered 44 percent of the vote, comprehensively defeating its nearest competitors, the ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’ of former vice president Yuri Boyko, former president Petro Poroshenko’s ‘European Solidarity,’ and ‘Fatherland,’ which is led by the veteran politician Yulia Tymoshenko.

Servant of the People now has 240 seats in the 450-member Verkhovna Rada, meaning that they don’t need a coalition to form a ruling majority.

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