All the votes that were cast have been counted, and Petro Poroshenko has not only won, but has also maintained a majority vote. He will be inaugurated on June 7th. But this map caught our eye:

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In his latest dispatch from Ukraine, Simon Ostrovsky interviews civilians who are fleeing from Slavyansk. It is a reminder that most residents of eastern Ukraine are neither particularly pro-EU nor particularly pro-separatist. Most of them would just like to live and go to work without bombs going off.

Interestingly, Ostrovsky also finds Interior Ministry troops on the front lines alongside other units, despite their reputation of being loyal to the ousted Yanukovych regime. One of the soldiers, who otherwise appears reluctant to comment, does admit that his unit is infamous now.

On his Window on Eurasia column, Paul Goble describes the bleak prospects of the seemingly promising increase in fertility rates in Russia. Nationalist demographer Anatoly Antonov explains that such optimism, coupled with rising rates of adult male morbidity and mortality and declining access to healthcare, is misplaced. Even with the current level of 1.6 children per woman, the country's population would still decline.

Read  Russian Population to Fall by Half in 50 Years Even if Recent Fertility Rise Sustained, Moscow Demographer Says.

Unian.net is reporting two separate incidents where militants have attacks Ukraine's military positions. Near Slavyansk, one person was killed and another wounded when "DNR terrorists" reportedly fired on a military convoy near a roadblock established by the ATO (anti-terror op). This video reportedly shows the aftermath, though it's not terribly helpful:

Meanwhile, near Lugansk, rebels reportedly attacked a National Guard base, hitting a military warehouse, perhaps with an RPG, and causing it to explode. Yesterday there were two other attacks on National Guard bases in this region.

Russia's stock market has held another rally today, and is (nearly) at its highest point since the Yanukovych government in Ukraine was toppled. Bloomberg reports:

Gazprom added 1.6 percent and the Micex rose the most since May 19 after Morgan Stanley upgraded the shares on optimism the election of Petro Poroshenko as president of Ukraine will ease tension between the two nations. Poroshenko’s win is an “important step” toward de-escalation in Ukraine and Russian stocks will rise as further steps are made to resolve the standoff, Morgan Stanley said in an e-mailed note.

The chart tells the tale.

While the MICEX is still down 3.67% since the start of the year, it has recovered 85.4% of the value it lost between the fall of the Yanukovych government and its lowest point on March 14, right before the Crimean referendum.

The markets reacted poorly when they believed that Putin was driving Russia towards war. Now Putin is seen by investors as deescalating the crisis. With Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles knocking Ukrainian aircraft out of the sky, and with well-armed separatists still in control of large parts of eastern Ukraine, one has to wonder if Putin is really being rewarded by the markets for being more subtle. If sanctions were designed to halt a major Russian invasion, they may have worked for now, but if sanctions were designed to bring stability to Ukraine, one has to wonder whether deescalation is simply a Pyrrhic victory.