European Council on Foreign Relations: Misrule of law: Ukraine’s constitutional crisis

 Instead of just replacing the prime minister, Zelensky progressively removed all reformers from the cabinet, state-owned enterprises, and government agencies. His timing could not have been worse. The new prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, was competent enough in his response to the coronavirus crisis. Yet Ukraine is one of several countries in which bad actors have used the crises of the moment as an opportunity to covertly dismantle reforms, betting that there would be no pushback from a European Union focused on the pandemic and a United States preoccupied by its presidential election.

Zelensky did nothing while revanchist oligarchs and Russian propagandists attacked EU agreements as “external governance” and domestic reformers as Sorosyata ([George] Soros’s piglets). Worse, some of Zelensky’s new appointments – such as that of the chief prosecutor, Iryna Venediktova – fanned the flames. As Zelensky was elected to fight corruption, his Servant of the People party fared poorly in the October local elections. The party’s once-impressive majority in the national parliament seems certain to disintegrate. Smelling blood in the water, judges on the Constitutional Court have thrown out every vestige of reform they can find.[...]

The crisis partly results from the efforts that Ukrainian oligarchs and other anti-reform forces have made to rebuild their influence in the judiciary in 2019 and 2020. When Poroshenko was president, they were largely on the defensive, intent on resisting legal reforms at every stage. Zelensky’s first chief prosecutor, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, initially led a campaign against such resistance. He was not prepared to selectively prosecute leading figures of the Poroshenko era or the enemies of the oligarchs who backed Zelensky. In contrast, Venediktova appears to have shot the messenger – by harassing and laying charges against reformers, including Ryaboshapka.

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The Atlantic: Ukraine’s Quiet Depopulation Crisis

Ukraine nevertheless stands apart. It is still a nation at war, yet in a survey last year, 55 percent of residents named mass emigration as the greatest threat to their country—the UN estimates that Ukraine could lose nearly a fifth of its population by 2050. And whereas politicians in Eastern Europe typically invoke demographic decline as a justification for conservative policies such as restricting abortion rights and providing financial bonuses for large families, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to reverse brain drain by improving his country’s economy and rule of law. In December, he announced a program to draw young Ukrainians back from abroad with promises of preferential loans to start their own businesses upon their return. [...]

Why young Ukrainians leave places like this is no mystery. The country is Europe’s second-poorest, beset by corruption and low living standards, and it shares a border with the European Union. Furthermore, a war with Russia-backed separatists still wages in the east, and has displaced 2 million people, many internally. (Ukraine’s depopulation problem is also tied to high mortality rates: According to Ella Libanova, the director of the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies at the National Academy of Sciences, 30 percent of 20-year-old Ukrainian men won’t make it to their 60th birthday, thanks in large part to alcohol abuse and road accidents.)

So Ukraine’s limited ability to stem emigration is not entirely an issue of political will. Rather, it is a consequence of the country’s place in the global economy: as a reservoir of migrant labor. In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, the majority of first-time EU residence permits were given to Ukrainians, the lion’s share of whom moved to neighboring Poland. Remittances from overseas made up more than 11 percent of Ukraine’s GDP. That Ukrainians are heading to Poland and elsewhere in Central Europe also highlights the absurdity of these countries’ negative rhetoric toward prospective immigrants: “One of the paradoxes of [Central European] anti-migrant rhetoric toward the south … is that it’s only possible because those countries have benefited heavily from migration from the east,” Alexander Clarkson, a European-studies lecturer at King’s College London, told me.

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WorldAffairs: Ukraine Explained

One question at the heart of the impeachment case against Donald Trump is whether the president threatened to withhold US military assistance from Ukraine. In this episode, we explore why the US has been supporting Ukraine in Europe’s only active war and why Ukraine needs help defending itself against Russian aggression. John E. Herbst, Atlantic Council and former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Oxana Shevel, Tufts University, and Simon Ostrovsky, Filmmaker and Journalist at the PBS NewsHour, speak with Ray Suarez.

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Foreign Policy: It’s Time for Ukraine to Let the Donbass Go

The Donbass has consistently supported Ukraine’s most retrograde, anti-reformist, anti-European, pro-Russian, and pro-Soviet political forces. It was the Donbass that made Viktor Yanukovych, whose political career was dedicated to bringing Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit, president in 2010. It was out of the Donbass that came his corrupt Party of Regions. And it was the Donbass that opposed popular pro-democracy uprisings in 2004 and 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s occupation of the eastern Donbass in the summer of 2014 effectively disenfranchised its voters. That was bad for the voters, but it enabled pro-democratic forces in unoccupied Ukraine to win the presidency and control of the country’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, in 2014. Most of the reforms that have been adopted in the past five years—along with Ukraine’s steady march toward Europe—would have been impossible had the Donbass remained a part of Ukraine. [...]

The Donbass and its residents have been the war’s greatest losers. Thousands have died in the fighting; houses and infrastructure have been destroyed. The region’s economy, once an integral part of Ukraine’s, went into a tailspin, unemployment went through the roof, inflation soared—and the new regime and its thugs took advantage to enrich themselves. The separatist government helped promote the decay by dismantling viable factories and selling them to Russia. Small wonder that, for many Donbass residents, the best source of employment is the separatist armed forces. [...]

Thanks to Putin’s occupation of the eastern Donbass, his leverage over Ukraine also decreased. As long as a pro-Russian, anti-Western region was part of Ukraine, he could—and did—insist on being able to intervene on its behalf—ostensibly to protect the rights of Russian speakers, but in reality to interfere in the internal affairs of democratic neighbors. If the eastern Donbass is brought back into Ukraine’s fold, Putin’s leverage will increase once more. He’d be given an inroad back into the country’s politics as a whole.

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EURACTIV: Ukraine president on course for unprecedented majority after election win

A pre-election survey by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute said 45% of voters expected Zelenskiy to negotiate a peace in the Donbass within 12 months — the biggest single priority among voters.

But 57% would not accept peace at the cost of allowing Crimea to become a recognised part of Russia — something Moscow is likely to insist on — and 62% would not accept peace if Donbass did not return to Kyiv’s full control.

More than half of respondents also expected Ukraine to be a member of the European Union by 2030. [...]

Another new pro-Western party, Voice, fronted by rock star Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, also passed the 5% threshold to enter parliament. Voice is the only party to which Zelenskiy has offered coalition talks.

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Politico: What Putin could lose in Ukraine

Unlike Poroshenko, who embraced Ukrainian nationalism and spoke only in Ukrainian, Zelenskiy is capable of speaking to Russians in their own language, and of reaching them through his Instagram and other social media channels. For Putin, having a Russian-speaking president in democratic Ukraine is like eating a live octopus — exhilarating, yes, but also terrifying. [...]

Putin, it seems, has a different take. The Russian president has not called the Russian-speaking comedian to congratulate him on his victory. There has been near silence from the Kremlin except a terse statement “recognizing” the election, while criticizing Ukraine for not allowing the 3.5 million Ukrainians living in Russia to vote.

Sure, Putin most likely prefers Zelenskiy to Poroshenko, who was more interested in going mano o mano with Putin than the nitty-gritty of governance. The comedian has promised to lift the ban on Russian artists and Russian social networks, and will most likely encourage a cultural thaw between the two countries. Direct flights might even be reinstated at some point. [...]

The real danger for Putin is what happens next. Zelenskiy fired the first salvo on election night by calling out to all post-Soviet states with the cheer: “Look at us – everything is possible.” His landslide victory in a free election has puzzled Russians who are used to elections being decided in advance. It makes them wonder whether Putin could also be so easily swept aside in a free election. The theater of democracy in Ukraine has already been infectious: Some politicians have called for debates in football stadiums for Russian elections.

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openDemocracy: The people’s rebellion, or why a showman became president of Ukraine

This, then, is a rebellious popular vote against corrupt politics-as-usual by people who are largely non-political. In this sense, there’s a certain resonance with the Gilets Jaunes movement – and like their French counterparts, Zelensky voters do not have any political unity or ideological coherence. Their basic common denominator is negation. The demands and expectations of Zelensky voters are heterogeneous and even contradictory, ranging from putting an end to the war and oligarchy to increasing wages, lowering prices and household gas tariffs. But in the best traditions of 1968, they are demanding the “impossible” – just social conditions that are equal for all. And 73% means a clear refusal of any kind of negotiations or possible compromise with the current ruling class so that it could remain in power. [...]

While Zelensky voters may vary widely in their claims about what they voted for, they found common ground in what they voted against. First of all, they voted against the war. And this is not a blind denial of the reality of warfare and occupation – this vote was against the war as a political and economic system of relations between the state and the society that has emerged in Ukraine during the recent years. Russian military intervention and occupation has poisoned the atmosphere inside Ukraine, creating the conditions for political reaction in the form of bans on certain social media platforms, attacks on anti-corruption NGOs, the beating and killing of activists, racist pogroms and so on. [...]

Zelensky isn’t a right-winger or even a conservative, but rather a libertarian in a very broad sense, while right-wing populism is exactly what Ukraine has experienced under Poroshenko’s rule at its purest. Throughout most of his presidency, Poroshenko has addressed the Ukrainian public predominantly in a discourse of narrow-minded ethnic nationalism borrowed from Ukraine’s far-right Svoboda party. He ended up campaigning for president with the medieval slogan “Army! Language! Faith!” – in reference to laws protecting the Ukrainan language, military reforms and the creation of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In recent years, various extreme right and neo-Nazi organisations have been legitimised in the public sphere as “activists” and “freedom fighters”, receiving the informal backing of the security services and law enforcement. They have remained unpunished for their committed hate crimes.

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openDemocracy: Ukrainians voted for change, but is it enough?

Still, sociologist Iryna Bekeshkina believes that Zelensky voters share a wide range of views. For example, Bekeshkina cited statistics on Zelensky supporters’ attitudes towards NATO membership - 37% support the idea, 33% support a neutral status for Ukraine, and six percent support a military union with Russia. In Bekeshkina’s opinion, Ukrainian citizens didn’t vote so much for Zelensky, but against Poroshenko.

It’s hard to figure out what Zelensky really offered Ukrainian voters, or how he sees internal and foreign politics. Indeed, Zelensky gave practically no interviews to journalists throughout the election campaign. For the most part, he limited himself to short phrases or jokes. In the end, he gave an interview to RBC-Ukraine several days before the election. But questions remained - and for both journalists and voters it was important to find out more about Zelensky. More, at least, than what they knew about him as the actor who plays a president in a popular television series. [...]

After the exit polls were released, Poroshenko conceded with a farewell speech in which he thanked Ukrainian citizens for their votes: “I’m leaving the office of president, but I’m not leaving politics.” Among Poroshenko’s achievements we can pick out the following: visa-free regime with the EU, an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church, a new and effective Ukrainian army, as well as the decentralisation reform. Poroshenko’s presidency coincided with the first years of the Russia-Ukraine war and the annexation of Crimea. And during Poroshenko’s rule, the Ukrainian government has built an international pro-Ukrainian coalition, which is important in terms of supporting sanctions against Russian officials responsible for crimes in Donbas and repressions in Crimea.

But at the same time, recent corruption scandals at defence manufacturer Ukroboronprom and in Ukraine’s energy sector suggested that Poroshenko was all-too loyal when it came to his “team”. The incumbent also drew on the support of regional politicians with “complex” backgrounds. The mayor of Odesa Gennady Trukhanov, who holds Russian citizenship, is connected to corruption schemes in the city, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Indeed, recent years have seen a wave of attacks on civil society activists in the southern port city.

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Politico: 6 takeaways from Ukraine’s presidential vote

It’s not a clean break — these kinds of divisions don't tend to be. But previous candidates have successfully exploited this split: Yanukovych owed his surprise victory in the 2006 parliamentary election to a large degree by playing on the resentment felt by those in the Russian-speaking south and east toward western and central Ukrainians. [...]

But this time, the strategy failed: The electoral map shows green representing support for Zelenskiy — a Russian speaker — stretching across regional and linguistic boundaries. [...]

And Ukraine’s ultra-nationalists are typically an anemic presence at the polls. Ruslan Koshulynsky, a joint candidate from far-right parties, won only 2.2 percent in the first round of this election. [...]

It would be wrong to say the idea of aligning Ukraine with Russia couldn't be revived in the future, or that there are no Moscow-friendly politicians. But the pro-Russian camp at the moment remains weak, divided and without a strong leader.

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openDemocracy: Buffoons are taking over the court: the danger of modern politics as spectacle

Now, it is important to acknowledge that politics and the exercise of political power have always had a theatrical dimension: rites and ceremonials in earlier societies, parades, commemorations, election campaigns and debates or meetings of leaders at international summits in modern times, have all involved elements of a theatrical performance. But these elements (just as was the case with court jesters) played an auxiliary – albeit important – role which consisted in providing the existing order with solemnity and gravity, and, ultimately, with additional legitimacy.

Today, by contrast, these elements are becoming more and more central to the political: it is now all about the image of leaders, their communication skills, the way they dress, speak or shake each other’s hands, they way they manage their Twitter and Instagram accounts. In a way, similar to Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre, politics increasingly immerses itself in everyday life and thereby, necessarily, increasingly desacralizes itself. [...]

It is a symptom of a profound social malaise, greatly intensified in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and, in particular, the way it was dealt with: taxpayers first paid for the rescue of those who caused it, and then suffered austerity measures that were presented to them as the only option by those in power and which aggravated the problems of millions of households

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Foreign Policy: In Ukraine’s Election, Pro-Russian Candidates Can’t Win

In the other 93 percent of Ukraine, however, things have not gone in the Kremlin’s favor. For Ukrainian politicians focused on consolidating their country’s independence and national identity—and that includes Poroshenko and most of the country’s political class—the status quo is tolerable. They would prefer to get Crimea and the Donbass back, yet Russia’s ongoing occupation has its benefits too. In seizing those areas, Russia chopped off the two regions with the least-developed sense of Ukrainian identity. And with them gone, no pro-Russian candidate could win a Ukrainian election. Long gone are the days when candidates such as former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was openly sympathetic to Russia, could win a majority of votes. [...]

It is less clear what Russia is getting from the status quo. The Kremlin has proved willing to bear the costs of occupation, paying for soldiers’ salaries, tolerating the collapse in Russia-Ukraine trade, and putting up with Western sanctions that will persist until Moscow agrees to return the Donbass to Ukrainian control. Why? There are several potential explanations. [...]

Yet Russia’s neighbors do not seem to have gotten the message. Just last year, Armenia tossed out its pro-Russian government, installing a younger crowd that wants better ties with Europe. Fearing blowback, the new Armenian government has insisted that its revolution is not anti-Russia. But the country is tacking closer to the West all the same. [...]

European Union membership for Ukraine is no more likely in the short term. But here, too, the Donbass is not the most important factor. More significant is the EU’s own expansion fatigue. Ukraine, with 44 million people, would be the most populous country to join the EU since Spain joined the then-European Communities in 1986. Integrating countries such as Romania and Bulgaria caused plenty of difficulty. Ukraine is significantly bigger, and it would be significantly harder to integrate. Existing member states aren’t eager to take on that challenge now.

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