Poroshenko calls McCain ‘hero of Ukraine’
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attended the memorial service of the late US senator John McCain in Washington on September 1. After the ceremony, Poroshenko said that senator McCain was close to Ukraine and its people at a critical moment in its history, the Ukrainian president’s press service reports.
“We remembered him at the Maidan during the Revolution of Dignity, when at a temperature of minus 26 degrees he came out, hardly dressed, and approached the hundreds of thousands of people who stood at the Maidan in order to deliver the absolutely needed words of support. That the whole world and the United States of America are with Ukrainians. And when it was necessary to consolidate peace during the Munich Security Conference, he was a leader and helped us,” Poroshenko observed.
“You are a real hero of America, but you are also a real hero of Ukraine. Thank you,” the Ukrainian head of state remarked.
Poroshenko also recalled one of his last meetings with the senator, when they decided to visit the Ukrainian marines who were defending the Shyrokyne region.
“10 kilometers from the entrance to the security service, I was told that artillery shelling of the place we were traveling to had begun. And I told the senator that I, as president and supreme commander, had to be there, but the senator’s safety – and the Americans were very concerned and asking for him not to go. And I will always, for the rest of my life, remember what he said: ‘In the most severe and dangerous times of your history, Mr President, I am with you,” Poroshenko recalled.
The senator died at 81 years of age on August 25. He will be buried on Sunday, September 2, at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.