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| - Ukraine's former President Petro Poroshenko has been hospitalised with double pneumonia, his wife said Saturday, days after he tested positive for Covid-19. "Petro Oleksiyovych (Poroshenko) was hospitalised" in Kiev, his wife Maryna Poroshenko said in a video posted on Facebook. "Despite the fact that my husband has double pneumonia, he is strong-willed and is demonstrating this in the fight against the disease," Maryna Poroshenko said. 55-year-old Poroshenko on Tuesday announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus and said he was receiving treatment at home. Poroshenko, who is currently a member of the Ukrainian parliament, suffers from diabetes, which is associated with an increased risk of developing complications from the coronavirus. He led Ukraine after Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the outbreak of an ongoing conflict with Moscow-backed separatists in the east of the country. In 2019 he was easily beaten in presidential elections by Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian with no previous political experience. Ukraine, one of Europe's poorest countries with a population of some 40 million, has reported more than 222,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 4,300 fatalities. Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Zelensky's wife both contracted the virus but have recovered. dg/jbr/har
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