Zelenskiy, Kolomoisky offer conflicting positions on Kremlin

Russia and Ukraine
have only one thing in common left, which is their state border,
President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on his Facebook page on May 2. He
responded to Russian President Putin’s comment
the prior day
that Russians and Ukrainians are a single people with much in common. “The
reality is such that today, after the annexation of Crimea and aggression in
Donbas, we have only one thing ‘in common’ – that’s the state border. 2,295
kilometers and 400 meters ‘in common.’ And Russia should return Ukraine’s
control over every millimeter. Only then can we continue to search for what’s
‘in common’,” he wrote. “And the ban on crude oil
product exports,
the opening of passport distribution points to the residents of the occupied
territories, and the detention of Ukrainians in captivity doesn’t bring us any
closer to resolving relations between our countries.”

The armed fighting in
Ukraine’s Donbas region is a “civil conflict,” said oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky,
the main sponsor of Zelenskiy’s election campaign, in an interview with the
bihus.info news site published on May 2. “A civil conflict. It could also be a
civil war, but that’s too global. This is a civil conflict,” Kolomoisky said.
Ukrainians are fighting against Ukrainians, with Russia “supporting one side of
Ukrainians,” he said. If Russia weren’t there, then “Ukrainians would have
reconciled long ago,” he said. Russia provoked and organized one side, while on
the other side, it was “revolutionaries who ran around parliament and canceled
laws,” he said, repeating the Kremlin narrative that Crimea and Donbas rebelled
against the Kyiv government after it canceled a language law in February 2014
that was alleged to protect Russian speakers. The war in Donbas was provoked by
“mutual hate” in a domestic civil war that is in its hot phase in Donbas, and
in its cold phase throughout the country, he said.

Zenon Zawada: So far, Zelenskiy has largely
adopted Ukraine’s foreign policy position towards Russia that had been
established by the Poroshenko administration, an observation that has also been
made by Western authorities, such as Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the
European Commission. It’s clear that he will have a strong anti-Kremlin
position for at least the first few months of his presidency. On the other
hand, his main campaign sponsor, Kolomoisky, indicated that he has adopted
numerous Kremlin narratives about the war in Donbas, including that it’s a
civil conflict that was partly provoked by Ukraine’s language divide. Unlike
the Kremlin, Kolomoisky acknowledges that Russia is sponsoring the rebel
fighters, without which they would have lost long ago. Yet we believe his repetition
of Kremlin narratives could be a deliberate maneuver by Kolomoisky to create
the possibility to reach a new peace agreement gradually. It’s possible that
Kolomoisky could work behind the scenes, using his various contacts, to reach a
new agreement with the Kremlin, while Zelenskiy maintains an anti-Kremlin
position as president.

While Kolomoisky has declared his expectation that Ukraine will become a
Western-aligned eastern Europe country in the past, we believe it’s possible
that he could just as well work to keep Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of
influence, especially if that means securing his control over many Ukrainians
assets. Kolomoisky has demonstrated a pattern of inconsistencies. So time will
tell just how closely Zelenskiy works with Kolomoisky, to what extent
Kolomoisky will work towards a new agreement with the Kremlin, and to what
extent the two of them will be willing and able to resist Russian pressure to
capitulate.