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KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he had received strong assurances of U.S. support for his country from Donald Trump during a meeting in the White House on Tuesday.

Trump has called in the past for improved U.S. ties with Russia, stoking fears in Ukraine that he might row back from past U.S. pledges of support for Poroshenko’s pro-Western administration in Kiev.

Moscow seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and has backed pro-Russian separatist rebels battling Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine.

“There was a full, detailed meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. We received strong support from the U.S. side, support in terms of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the independence of our state,” Poroshenko was quoted as telling journalists by Ukrainian news agency Interfax Ukraine.