RPT: REVIEW - Incidents During Presidential Inaugurations In Ukraine

KIEV/MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th May, 2019) The inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was held on Monday at the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev.

The ceremony of the inauguration of president around the world is defined in very clear terms, and the heads of state usually follow the established protocol. However, incidents occur from time to time.

The first inauguration in Ukraine took place in 1991, when Leonid Kravchuk took the oath to the people. The ceremony was very modest and short, as there was no protocol for ceremonial events back then. The country's constitution did not exist at that time either and was adopted by the parliament only five years later. It was Ukrainian lawmaker Roman Lubkovskiy who suggested that the president should keep his hand on a sacred book during the inauguration ceremony. The Peresopnytsia Gospel, whose history exceeds 450 years, was chosen for the oath.

The country's next president, Leonid Kuchma, took the oath on two books, the constitution and the gospel.

The present-day tradition to sing the national anthem at the parliament during the inauguration ceremony neither existed at the time of the first ceremony, since the country's anthem was not written.

The first inauguration of Ukraine's second president took place on July 10, 1994, and was also very modest. Kuchma entered the parliament's building using the side doors instead of the main entrance, without honor guard or any special honors. He was alone, without the first lady. A military band was playing the Ukrainian anthem, but without words.

There was a little delay. It was planned that Kuchma's predecessor, Kravchuk, would be waiting for him at the Mariinskiy Palace, where the two politicians would shake hands and take pictures. But, as Dmitry Tabachnik, then-Kuchma's campaign manager and later head of his administration, said, the oath took less time than it was planned, and Kuchma went to talk to the people who gathered outside the parliament building and take pictures with them. When Kravchuk appeared, both of them teared up a little bit to the sounds of the Ukrainian anthem.

In 1999, Kuchma held an impressive inaugural ceremony, at the Ukraina Palace.

The inauguration of Viktor Yushchenko in 2005, which took place after the so-called Orange Revolution, was a large-scale event. After the official part at the parliament, the president went to Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti square, where thousands of Ukrainians were waiting for him. However, the informal part of the event did not go smoothly � the pigeons with orange ribbons, which Yushchenko was supposed to release, did not want to fly away.

The largest number of incidents occurred during the inauguration of Ukraine's fourth President Viktor Yanukovych, whose duties were eventually terminated early. During his 2010 inauguration, the parliament building's doors slammed in his face, then he had to take the oath in a half-empty hall, while when the national anthem sounded it turned out that the president did not know it by heart.

An incident also occurred during the inauguration of Petro Poroshenko in 2014. The ceremony itself went fine, but before that, when the president was approaching the parliament building, a guard of honor fainted in front of him. It turned out later that the cause of the guard's fainting was heat and exhaustion.