Zelensky presidency based on pleasing the public, veteran editor says

Ukrainian President Zelensky and key state officials
have failed to muster any ability to lead the country and instead are trying to
please the public in order to maintain the president’s high poll ratings, said
in a Feb. 15 column Yulia Mostova, the veteran political observer and former
chief editor of the dt.ua news site. The current government doesn’t have the
visionary, civil and state resources to lead the country through difficult but
necessary reforms, she said. Instead, “the entire Zelensky team is trying to
apply business principles in decision-making to the state administration,
including parliament and the cabinet,” she said.

Zelensky and his key officials don’t want to lose his
high poll ratings (currently at about 59% approval),
prompting lingering corruption that includes police continuing to ignore
foreign-registered cars, customs officials depressing the value of imports,
SMEs resisting state-issued cash registers (and taxation), and “postponing for
later endless other painful, but necessary decisions,” Mostova wrote. She
noted, “The pastor is following the flock, indulging them in all their
desires.”

As a result, the Zelensky administration has been
losing control of state institutions, which are becoming increasingly futile,
Mostova said. “Kyiv already can’t significantly influence the situation in
Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy or Lviv. It can only mumble through unseasoned regional
administrators, not understanding how to cultivate local ones. Unpunished
corruption has spread to the middle ranks, and any boss of a customs shift has
more power than the fashionable customs service head,” wrote Mostova, who is
the wife of the pro-NATO politician Anatoliy Grytsenko, who competed against
Zelensky in last year’s presidential elections.

Zenon Zawada: Most of
Mostova’s conclusions are in line with our assessments of the Zelensky
administration, which is that it has adopted a strictly pragmatic, short-term
approach to politics that can be described as “populism to an extreme.” We
agree that Zelensky doesn’t have the resources and convictions not only to lead
painful domestic reforms, but also to withstand Russian pressure to accept
harsh concessions in the war in Donbas. Most of his public support is based on
the expectation that he will end the war in Donbas
in a way that is more-or-less acceptable. This will be based on the Zelensky
administration’s ability to convince the public it is not capitulating to
Russian demands, while painting the pro-Western forces – who will opposing the
peace deal likely to emerge by the summer – as extremists who want to continue
waging an unreasonable war.

It’s this situation in Ukraine – with ongoing
corruption, lacking attempts to improve rule of law, a poorly functioning state
apparatus, and an exhausted public – that the Kremlin has been working five
years to produce with its war of attrition in Donbas. Unfortunately, the
Kremlin has Ukraine exactly where it wants it to be, and it’s preparing to
deliver the final blows to Ukrainian sovereignty this year.

The resistance to the Kremlin will come from the
same active citizens that organized the maidan protests of 2004 and 2013,
though it’s unclear what actions they will take with the majority of the public
favoring an end to warfare. It will also play into the Kremlin’s hands is civil
strife erupts in Ukraine, particularly with the president having already lost
much influence over local bodies, as described by Mostova. It’s also dangerous
that no other politician enjoys a net positive ranking in trust by the public besides Zelensky.