Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC's David Stern reports on Ukraine exit polls 
 
 Ukrainian confectionery tycoon Petro Poroshenko has claimed outright victory in the country's presidential election. 
 
 Mr Poroshenko, known as the "chocolate king", won more than 55% of the vote in the first round, exit polls suggest. 
 
 Announcing he had won, the 48-year-old businessman promised to forge closer links with the EU and restore peace in restive eastern regions. 
 
 Pro-Russian separatists severely disrupted voting there. Some 20 people have died in fighting in recent days. 
 
 No polling stations were open in Donetsk city, and across the region only seven out of 12 district electoral commissions were operating. The separatists are in control of large areas of the Donestk and Luhansk regions. 
 
 Four hours before polls closed, at 16:00 (13:00 GMT), unofficial estimates put the turnout nationwide at 45%. 
 
 Analysis by David Stern, BBC News, Kiev 
 
 The hope is that this election will unite the country and give Mr Poroshenko legitimacy - especially in the eyes of the people in the east, where the pro-Russia separatist movement has taken hold. 
 
 Just a handful of election commissions were operating in eastern regions, and there are fears that the coming days will see an escalation in violence there. The main question is - what will Russia's reaction be? 
 
 President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow will respect the election results. But respect is not quite the same as recognition. Russia may decide that any actions by Mr Poroshenko to put down the insurgency in the east will be unacceptable. 
 
 We've also heard that Mr Poroshenko could be a man Moscow can work with. He's a businessman with interests in Russia. The Russians have some familiarity with him, which can possibly contribute to negotiations in the coming days. 
 
 Addressing supporters in Kiev, Mr Poroshenko said he would support a parliamentary election later this year. 
 
 He also said he would never recognise Russia's "occupation of Crimea", annexed by Moscow in March. Asked about relations with Russia, he said the "sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Ukraine mattered most to him. 
 
 Mr Poroshenko is the billionaire owner of the Roshen chocolates group, a TV station and several manufacturing plants. 
 
 US President Barack Obama hailed the election as an "important step forward in the efforts of the Ukrainian government to unify the country". 
 
 Sunday's poll was called after President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed in February, amid mass protests against his pro-Russian policies. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Vitaliy Klitschko (right) says he has been elected mayor of Kiev 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption In one of the two exit polls, Petro Poroshenko was predicted to have won as much as 57% of the vote 
 
 Local elections were also held on Sunday in Ukraine. Former boxer Vitaliy Klitschko - again quoting exit polls - claimed he had been elected mayor of Kiev. 
 
 Mr Klitschko, a pro-Western politician, withdrew his own presidential bid and announced his support for Mr Poroshenko. 
 
 Independence votes 
 
 On Friday Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would respect the outcome of Ukraine's election. 
 
 Kiev and the West accuse Russia of stoking separatist sentiment - a claim President Putin denies. 
 
 Separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk declared independence after referendums on 11 May, a move not recognised by Kiev or its Western allies. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Official results are not expected until Monday 
 
 The two regions took their cue from a disputed referendum in Crimea, which led to Russia's annexation of the southern peninsula. 
 
 Eighteen candidates were competing in the presidential election, seen as a crucial to unite the country. 
 
 The exit polls suggest ex-PM Yulia Tymoshenko came a distant second, with over 12% of the vote. 
 
 "I want to congratulate the whole of Ukraine since despite external aggression, despite the Kremlin's intent to disrupt this election we had an honest and democratic election in Ukraine," Ms Tymoshenko said after the polls closed. 
 
 If the exit polls are confirmed, there will be no need for a run-off vote next month. 
 
 In other developments, Italian photojournalist Andrea Rocchelli and his Russian colleague Andrey Mironov were killed in clashes between separatist and government forces near Sloviansk on Saturday. 
 
 Meanwhile, Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev has begun a two-day trip to Crimea in a visit denounced by Ukraine as a "provocation". ||||| This should have been a festive spring day, when citizens who fought to overthrow their corrupt and autocratic government voted for a new president in a free and fair election. But the mood at the polls here on a warm and sunny Sunday was sober. Ukrainians feel themselves to be at war, and their hopes that their votes will revive the country are tempered. 
 
 “I’m a realist,” said Katya Lapina, a 25-year-old office worker, outside a polling station in the Kiev suburbs. “I don’t think after this day everything will change. It’s the first step in a very long way. I just hope the future president will remember the price we spent for this.” 
 
 That remains to be seen. The big winner in Sunday’s vote was not the idealistic young protesters who spent the winter in Kiev’s Maidan square but Petro Poroshenko, one of Ukraine’s billionaire business magnates. Poroshenko, who made his money producing chocolate, joined the Maidan movement and helped steer it away from violence. But he is very much a figure of Ukraine’s failed past — dysfunctional governments, outsized oligarchs and epic corruption. 
 
 Thanks in no small part to Russian aggression, the oligarchs, who along with thuggish president Viktor Yanukovych were the targets of the Maidan, have emerged from the revolution stronger than ever. Three are actual or de facto governors of eastern provinces where Russia has been fomenting armed insurrection. Two are sponsoring their own militias to push back against the pro-Moscow separatist movements. 
 
 Poroshenko will take office owing those men, whose predations on the Ukrainian state did much to create the economic mess that the new government must try to clean up. He also may owe Dmytro Firtash, a shadowy figure who made a fortune brokering gas deals between Russia and Ukraine and is under a U.S. indictment for bribery. Firtash backed Poroshenko and is reported to have helped cut a deal under which one of Poroshenko’s principal challengers withdrew from the presidential race (though the candidate’s staff denies it). Firtash is also close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who considers Ukrainian presidents to be his rightful vassals. 
 
 As disheartening as all this may be to Ukrainians longing for an economy and political system worthy of the European Union, it may also explain why Putin has ratcheted back his armed aggression inside Ukraine and hinted he will recognize the new government. Western diplomats and some Ukrainian analysts suspect that the Kremlin may be open to bargaining with Poroshenko, or may already be talking to him through Firtash or others. That makes the ascent of the chocolate king a hopeful prospect for the Obama administration, Germany and other European governments, who would welcome the chance to back away from confrontation with Putin. 
 
 Poroshenko talks of making Ukraine a partner of both the West and Russia, of signing an association agreement with the European Union and a free trade agreement with Moscow. He says he’ll use force to clear Russian-sponsored separatist militants from the two eastern provinces where they occupy government buildings, but that he’ll also move quickly on constitutional reforms that would decentralize power to those regions. “If Putin actually wants a deal,” says one Western official, “he can do it with Poroshenko.” 
 
 So what of the sweeping economic and political reforms that the Maidan movement demanded? Poroshenko and the cobbled-together parliamentary government with which he will share power say they are still on the agenda. It helps that a detailed road map already exists, in the form of Ukraine’s agreements with the European Union and International Monetary Fund. The cabinet under Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has already taken the first painful steps: a 56 percent increase in gas prices; 25,000 civil service layoffs; a cut in child subsidies. 
 
 The corruption of the previous government was so staggering that some think big improvements could be relatively easy. An European ambassador says that $70 billion may have been diverted from the government budget over five years; reduce that graft by just 20 percent and the government could match the bailout it’s getting from the IMF. 
 
 But can Poroshenko rein in the oligarchs? For years many of them have feasted on cheap energy, lucrative and opaque government procurement contracts and access to uncompetitive Russian markets. Putin could take away the latter — he has already blocked Poroshenko’s chocolate sales — while the West demands reform of the rest. Past governments — Poroshenko served in three of them — invariably dodged the IMF and cut shady deals with Putin. 
 
 If there is a difference this time, it is that the people who turned out on the Maidan and at the polls Sunday are more engaged. “We have to be open and honest with people, tell them the truth and not be corrupted,” Yatsenyuk’s chief cabinet minister, Ostap Semerak, told a group I joined from the German Marshall Fund. “Otherwise the people will turn on us.” 
 
 Read more from Jackson Diehl’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. ||||| KIEV, Ukraine — On a Sunday in December when the Ukrainian uprising seemed about to tip into wide-scale violence, Petro Poroshenko, a pro-Western billionaire, thrust himself between antigovernment protesters and riot police officers clashing outside the presidential headquarters, climbed on a bulldozer that was threatening to plow through the crowd and grabbed an orange plastic megaphone. 
 
 “Friends, calm down,” he shouted, as pro-government thugs brought in to antagonize the demonstrators cursed him and hurled anti-Semitic slurs, though he is a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox faith, not Jewish. As chaos swirled, Mr. Poroshenko, 48, stood his ground, helping keep injuries to a minimum, but also cementing his status as a leader of the pro-European opposition and defying the stereotype of the superrich above it all. 
 
 Now, with less than a week to go until a presidential election here, Mr. Poroshenko is once again at the center of a fracas that most of his fellow oligarchs would rather avoid. The latest polls show Mr. Poroshenko, a confection magnate known as the Chocolate King, as the heavy favorite, likely to avoid a runoff with his strongest opponent, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko. Ms. Tymoshenko insists that the polls are wrong and that she will surge ahead. 
 
 A poll by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, conducted April 29 to May 11, found Mr. Poroshenko supported by 34 percent of all voters, compared with 6 percent for Ms. Tymoshenko and 4 percent for Sergey Tigipko, a member of Parliament and former economics minister; 25 percent said they were undecided. The survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. 
 
 Among voters who said they had made up their minds, Mr. Poroshenko was supported by 54.7 percent — enough to avoid a runoff — with 9.6 percent for Ms. Tymoshenko and 6.7 percent for Mr. Tigipko. 
 
 With the country still roiled by separatist violence in the east, the growing air of inevitability around Mr. Poroshenko, who has deep business interests in Russia, has redrawn the Ukraine conflict. It has presented the Kremlin with the prospect of a clear negotiating partner, apparently contributing, officials and analysts say, to a softening in the stance of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. 
 
 After weeks of threatening an invasion, Mr. Putin now seems to have closed off the possibility of a Crimea-style land grab in the east, and even issued guarded support for the election to go forward. 
 
 “You can have a kind of a civil war and this kind of gray zone and be completely separated and face a higher degree of economic sanctions,” said Adrian Karatnycky, an expert on Ukraine at the Atlantic Council, describing the choice facing Mr. Putin. “Or you can see if it’s possible to bargain with this new guy, who has businesses in Russia, who has never been known to be a big ultranationalist.” 
 
 Mr. Poroshenko is a veteran of Ukrainian politics, having served as foreign minister under President Viktor A. Yushchenko; as economics minister under the ousted president, Viktor F. Yanukovych; and as a longtime member of Parliament, including a stint as speaker. 
 
 “The reasoning on Poroshenko is that he is a pragmatist and he was in the Yanukovych government,” Mr. Karatnycky said. “He is a person who is a dealmaker. From that point of view, it may mean that Putin is willing to give it a chance of trying to get something out of this.” 
 
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 Exactly what Mr. Putin wants to get remains to be seen. Some analysts believe he wants a guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO. Others think he will settle only for a federalized government that permanently weakens Kiev, while still others believe he will continue destabilizing the country. 
 
 Recently, Mr. Poroshenko has struck a conciliatory tone, promising to mend ties with Russia and saying at a news conference on Sunday that he opposed holding a referendum on Ukrainian membership in NATO. He has also sought to bring normalcy to the campaign, assuring voters that he will provide security if elected but stressing a more traditional message: jobs. 
 
 “A new way of life means to be well off,” Mr. Poroshenko said, repeating his campaign slogan during a recent visit to a turbine factory in the eastern city of Kharkiv. “A new way of life means that the priority of any government, any authority should be to create new jobs. Our first goal is to guarantee security to all who live in Ukraine, to lead us out of the state of military tension.” 
 
 In recent weeks, however, he has kept some distance from the provisional government, which is viewed with deep suspicion in the east. 
 
 Mr. Poroshenko’s support for European integration will inevitably complicate his talks with Russia if he is elected. There is also a personal element to any negotiations. The Russian government has seized and closed a main factory and warehouse of his company, Roshen, in Lipetsk in southern Russia. 
 
 Among Ukraine’s political cognoscenti, Mr. Poroshenko’s election is regarded these days as a foregone conclusion. “He is going to be president,” said Mustafa Nayyem, a reporter with the online news site Ukrainska Pravda who is leading a team preparing the questions for debates on Channel 1, the national television station. 
 
 Mr. Poroshenko’s views already carry heavy influence in the provisional government in Kiev, including his belief that the government must crack down on armed insurgents in the east. 
 
 In some respects, Mr. Poroshenko is already being treated as president-in-waiting. In recent weeks, he has been meeting regularly with world leaders. 
 
 But while the West seems excited about the prospect of a Poroshenko presidency, some good-government advocates in Ukraine fear that Mr. Poroshenko’s business interests and his ties to other oligarchs may mean he would largely maintain the status quo. 
 
 Mr. Poroshenko’s path to the presidency was eased substantially in March when his main rival, the former boxer Vitali Klitschko, agreed to drop out of the race, endorse Mr. Poroshenko and run for mayor of Kiev instead. 
 
 The deal was reached at a meeting in Vienna orchestrated by Dmitry V. Firtash, the gas-trading tycoon, who was a longtime political patron of Mr. Yanukovych and has close business ties to Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy giant. Mr. Firtash’s role has raised concerns among some Western officials who are hoping to prevent a recurrence of surreptitious and corrupt side deals that have bedeviled Ukraine since Soviet times. 
 
 During a recent 90-minute debate between Mr. Poroshenko and two other candidates, he seemed comfortable with the attention accorded him as front-runner. He spoke easily, his words punctuated by hand gestures. His positions were mostly uncontroversial, but with a clear Western bent. 
 
 “The main direction of development has to be European integration,” he said at one point, “And it’s not a subject for discussion.” ||||| Story highlights CNN EXCLUSIVE: Christiane Amanpour interviews Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko 
 
 Poroshenko says a peace deal can come within months or even weeks 
 
 Russian President Vladimir Putin can be pragmatic or emotional, Poroshenko says 
 
 Ukraine will sign a cooperation agreement with the European Union on Friday 
 
 New Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says peace is possible if Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the right mood. 
 
 "Sometimes, the position of Mr. Putin is quite pragmatic, sometimes it is very emotional," Poroshenko told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Thursday in an exclusive interview, his first broadcast interview since taking over as Ukraine's leader on June 7. "I just try to find out the time when he is more pragmatic than emotional." 
 
 He said negotiations with Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine would continue on Friday, the day his unilaterally declared cease-fire expires and the day that he also will sign a cooperation agreement with the European Union that sparked the crisis in his country. 
 
 Escalating conflict? 
 
 The talks are intended to end fighting between the Moscow-backed separatists and Ukrainian military and militia forces that threatens to escalate into a broader conflict. 
 
 "I am optimistic and I'm thinking that within a few weeks, maybe months, we can have a deal to establish peace," Poroshenko said in the interview with Amanpour while he was in Brussels for EU talks that will include signing the cooperation agreement between Europe and the former Soviet satellite. 
 
 With the signing occurring the same day Poroshenko's seven-day cease-fire expires, concerns increased of further unrest in parts of eastern Ukraine and economic retaliation by Putin. 
 
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 Asked by Amanpour if he was the person who could forge a peace deal with Putin, Poroshenko said that was his goal. 
 
 "I'm ready to make peace with anybody" 
 
 "I'm ready to make a peace deal with anybody," he said. "I want to bring the peace to my country, not because we are weak, not because we are less patriotic than anybody. We are ready to defend my country because I hate the idea not to use the last opportunity to bring the peace to the region." 
 
 Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a tense standoff since March when Russia annexed the previously Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and massed troops along other parts of its border with Ukraine. 
 
 In an effort to calm the situation, Poroshenko declared a cease-fire last week in Kiev's fight against pro-Russia separatists, but the violence continued. 
 
 On Thursday, a Ukrainian national guard base came under attack in Donetsk, Anti-Terrorist Operation unit spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov said. Ukrainian troops were able to repel the attack but were bracing for another assault, according to Seleznyov. 
 
 Two days earlier, Ukrainian authorities said pro-Russia militants shot down a military helicopter in eastern Ukraine, killing nine. 
 
 Poroshenko told Amanpour that Friday's negotiations, which will include European officials, must show some progress before his unilateral cease-fire expires at the end of the day. He seeks a commitment to negotiations, the release of hostages, a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian-backed forces from Ukraine. 
 
 The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which operates a special monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine, said Thursday that four members of a Donetsk-based team of OSCE monitors apparently held by separatists had been released. 
 
 Without Russian withdrawal, "it is a real war" 
 
 "All the troops on Ukrainian territory are Russian, they are Russian citizens," he said, adding that separatist leaders were from the Russian secret service. "If that continues, it is a real war." 
 
 Asked what would happen without a sufficient response from the other side, Poroshenko only said he would make that decision Friday. 
 
 On Wednesday, Russia's upper house of parliament voted, at Putin's request, to revoke the President's right to use troops in Ukraine. The move appeared to be an effort by Putin to defuse tension before Friday's watershed Ukraine-EU moment, which Putin opposes. 
 
 Poroshenko called signing the agreement with the EU the second-most important moment in his nation's history, ranking only behind independence. 
 
 "Geographically we are already in Europe," he said, adding that Ukraine connected with European values. 
 
 Asked whether he was worried about a negative economic reaction on Putin's part, Poroshenko said the Russian President recently promised not to undertake such steps. 
 
 "He promised that we will have a negotiation in a trilateral format, together with a European Union representative, so we do not expect any immediate negative reaction," Poroshenko said. 
 
 At the same time, he made clear that in his mind, the Russian annexation of Crimea -- which has an ethnic Russian majority -- cannot stand. 
 
 "Crimea is Ukrainian" 
 
 Calling the issue a top priority, Poroshenko declared: "Crimea is Ukrainian and the whole world confirmed that Crimea is Ukrainian." 
 
 Peace talks involving representatives from all sides occurred Wednesday in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Ukraine's official Ukrinform news agency said. 
 
 Those participating included Ukrainian government officials, pro-Russia separatists from the restive eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Russian officials and members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. 
 
 Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States and Europe plan on possible further sanctions aimed at specific sectors of Russia's economy, depending on what choices Moscow makes ahead. 
 
 "It is critical for Russia to show in the next hours, literally, that they are moving to help disarm the separatists, to encourage them to disarm, to call on them to lay down their weapons and begin to become part of a legitimate political process," Kerry said Thursday after meeting with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
– Ukraine has elected a new president, and it's the man they call "The Chocolate King." Petro Poroshenko made billions in the candy industry before becoming a leading figure in Ukrainian politics. Here's what we know: He's distinctly pro-European—at his victory speech he appeared alongside Vitali Klitschko, the former boxing champ who started the street protests that deposed President Viktor Yanukovych, the New York Times points out, and he's vowed to sign the European trade deal Yanukovych spurned. In his victory speech, Poroshenko also said he would push for early parliamentary elections this year, a concession to Yanukovych critics who said that replacing the president wasn't enough. But Moscow doesn't hate the guy; Poroshenko has business interests in Russia, and has served in pro-Russian governments before. Russia's foreign minister says Russia is "ready for dialogue" with Poroshenko, and that Vladimir Putin would respect the election results as the "will of the Ukrainian people," the BBC reports. Yet US Senator Kelly Ayotte, who was in Ukraine to observe the elections, accused Russia of breaking its pledge not to interfere with the vote—separatists in the east largely prevented voting there. "We know this was Russia," Ayotte said, calling for more sanctions. Poroshenko has avoided involvement with Kiev's interim government, but he's no newcomer to politics. "He is very much a figure of Ukraine’s failed past — dysfunctional governments, outsized oligarchs and epic corruption," observes Jackson Diehl at the Washington Post. One Poroshenko voter put it this way: "It's like choosing the best from the worst."