Leonid Kravchuk was sworn in Thursday as the first elected president of Ukraine, and he pledged to defend the republic's sovereignty.
Kravchuk, a former Communist Party leader who won some 60 percent of the vote in elections Sunday, took the oath in a solemn ceremony in the parliament building with his hand resting on the republic's constitution and its declaration of sovereignty, issued more than a year ago."I swear to the people of Ukraine to fulfill the office of president of Ukraine in accordance with the constitution and laws of the republic," Kravchuk said.
A choir sang a hymn and patriotic songs and the blue and yellow national flag flew for the first time inside the chamber where a bust of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin once stood.
Kravchuk, 57, who campaigned on an aggressive platform of statehood and later independence from Moscow, also swore to uphold the rights and freedoms of all residents of the republic - a reference to its large Russian population.
He was expected to outline a fresh plan for relations between the former Soviet republics in an inaugural address later Thursday, insisting that Ukraine would not become part of any new state built on the ruins of the old Soviet Union.
Voters gave 90 percent backing Sunday to an independence declaration by parliament last August, pushing Ukraine past the point of no return on its path to statehood.
Kravchuk is due to meet Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Byelorussian President Stanislav Shushkevich in the Byelorussian capital Minsk on Saturday.
If they support him, it will mean the end of President Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to keep the 12 remaining republics together as a single state.