a united ukraine
now what happens?
Photo Credit: Pete Kiehart
Yesterday as I was grabbing a quick coffee at a Kyiv cafe, a group of people about my age (but much, much cooler than me, as tends to be the case here) sat down nearby. “Why do you look so happy?” asked one bearded man of his similarly-bearded friend.
“72.3,” his friend answered.
“72.3 what?”
“Percent!” he said, and the whole table started laughing good naturedly.
They were referring, as you no doubt are aware, to the share of votes that Volodymyr Zelensky received in Sunday’s presidential election. Zelensky defeated incumbent President Petro Poroshenko with the largest margin of victory in the history of Ukrainian presidential elections, and won a majority of the votes in all but one of Ukraine’s regions (Lviv). In most regions, the vote wasn’t even close.
On Sunday night, at a jam-packed campaign headquarters, Zelensky told the crowd “We did this together. We united Ukraine. We united our nation.”
That unity may be short-lived, however, as less than two days after the vote, parliamentary election season has already begun. Poroshenko promised to stay in politics and field a strong set of candidates for parliament in October, while Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman announced that he will not be on the Poroshenko ticket in the fall, opting instead to form his own political party. Two other clouds of uncertainty hang over Zelensky’s new presidency: he has not announced his core team, including appointments to key ministries such as Foreign Affairs and Defense, and his relationship with oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky (who stole $5.5 billion from one of Ukraine’s biggest banks, causing its nationalization) has yet to be fully elucidated.
In the meantime, Zelensky has to contend with an adversarial parliament as he attempts to jumpstart his ambitious reform agenda. One of his advisors, Dmitry Razumkov, said that the team would submit several laws to parliament immediately after Zelensky is inaugurated, including one that would remove immunity for MPs and government officials, including the President. Razumkov also discussed the team’s approach to language politics, underscoring that Zelensky intends to support the continued development of the state language (Ukrainian), using carrots rather than sticks, but the government will also not prohibit the production of information in minority languages (such as Russian).
(For the Russian speakers among you, this interview that RBK Ukraine did with Zelensky last week is worth a watch; he dives into his thoughts on language policy and beyond, including asserting that Ukraine needs its own Las Vegas, where drugs, gambling, and prostitution are legal. 🙃)
Overall, the mood here is cautiously optimistic. Ukraine is undergoing a peaceful transfer of power after its cleanest election ever. Zelensky has a huge mandate from the people of Ukraine to make significant changes in the country. Let’s hope he doesn’t squander it.
Thanks so much for sticking with me these past two months. Unless something huge happens before the week is out (which is possible! This is Ukraine, after all), this will be my last missive from Kyiv. Till next time, from Vilnius!