Ukraine’s Poroshenko to run for 2nd term as president

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday launched his bid for a second five-year term. He made the statement at a forum in Kiev, ahead of a tight election race in March. The 53-year-old confectionary magnate and one of Ukraine’s richest men came to power in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan protests. Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of Ukraine’s Batkivshchyna Party, is currently holding the lead in the polls with more than 20 percent of voters saying they would cast their ballots for her, as showed a recent survey, cited by the Director of the Institute for Analysis and Forecasting, Yury Lesnichy, TASS reported on Tuesday.