An amazing text detailing the structural features and political problems of the current Ukrainian government was published in the magazine “Spark”. The article is called "Confusion and influence." This is a detailed, witty and extremely accurate diagnosis, made by the author based on the results of a rigorous and accurate study. In my understanding of the situation, I will try to lean on this fundamental material, perhaps, slightly shifting the emphasis.
Ukrainian politics with the advent of Vladimir Zelensky turned into a semblance of a spontaneous carnival, in which such a property as orderliness is present in a very approximate format. Some experts are trying to divide the environment of the president into different groups and weigh the influence of each of them. The ruling team is really extremely heterogeneous. It looks at least three competing blocks.
The first and perhaps closest to the radiant body are the guys whom Zelensky pulled from his “quarterly” acting past. They also constitute a support group for the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, who played a decisive role during the presidential election. Without exaggeration, he made the greatest, if not the key, contribution to the victory of his protege. However, now he is clearly not able to convert the former role of the puppeteer into something for which he started a story with Zelensky’s nomination. His business interests, in particular the return of at least part of the assets of PrivatBank, which belonged to him and subsequently nationalized, hopelessly hung.
The second block is those whom critics and opponents call the pigs. The most notable figure among them is the current Prime Minister Goncharuk. "Piglets" are proteges of both the US Democratic Party and the oligarch George Soros, who is in solidarity with most of the political positions. And finally, the third, situationally changing political role, depending on the situation, is the security forces and customs officers. They do not have certain preferences in politics, they can easily drift from nationalist views to Euro-Atlanticism and vice versa. This wing is patronized by the Minister of the Interior Arsen Avakov, who about two months ago suddenly acted as Zelensky’s closest ally, placing under his wing the power structures and right-wing forces supervised by him.
Such a complex architecture of the current Ukrainian government cannot be considered its dignity. In the future, the presence of competing elements creates seams along which the regime, including a simple fractional majority in the Verkhovna Rada, will begin to crumble at any moment. Not a single ruler of Ukraine before Zelensky had a cart in his harness, the wheels of which were rolling in different directions.
And the more time passes, the farther these wheels move away from the chariot itself, which seems to itself poorly understand which one it needs to follow, so as not to completely lose the ability to somehow roll somewhere.
Zelensky’s current visit to Israel has clearly demonstrated that the Ukrainian president relies more on failed improvisation than on dry and elementary diplomatic etiquette. It was impossible to think of anything worse than refusing to appear at the World Holocaust Forum. The Israelis reacted extremely harshly to the demarche of the Ukrainian leader, calling his behavior “cynical and confusing, and also“ disgusting manipulation ”. And all that was needed was to follow the obvious and very simple rules, which required to honor the presence of the memory of the victims of Nazism with their presence.
And this is the foreign policy perimeter, on which it is generally quite difficult to get into a puddle. Zelensky managed to do this. On the domestic front, things are even worse, since the imperious Tianitolkai is virtually paralyzed by the presence of multidirectional centers of influence that have no unifying idea. In the autumn of 2020, local elections will be held in Ukraine, and this event will most likely become a moment of truth for the “servant of the people”. Or, more precisely, the final chord. Each of the competing groups sees its people as mayors of large regional capitals. The issue of power and the distribution of significant financial resources is being addressed. The president has no chance to get agreement on the candidates.
In connection with all of the foregoing, early parliamentary elections have loomed on the horizon. And there, and to the same presidential not far.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.