Zelensky stresses achievements in speech, drawing criticism from parliament

Ukrainian President Zelensky spent much of his annual
address to parliament on Oct. 20 highlighting his main achievements and
rehashing proposals to address lurking problems, particularly the recovery of
Donbas and Crimea. He boasted of the longest ceasefire in Donbas, which he said
has reached 86 days since the war began in 2014. “Is it ideal? No. Are there
violations? Yes. Are there attempts to undermine it? Absolutely. But it needs
to be recognized that the number of shootings have significantly diminished. We
have one casualty in fighting from all these days,” Zelensky said. He called
for creating special economic conditions in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk,
including tax and customs preferences, providing insurance for
military-political risks for investors and holding arbitrage based on
international standards.

The president’s opponents in parliament offered harsh
criticism for his address afterwards, dismissing it as a final stump speech of
accomplishments ahead of the Oct. 25 local elections. “It can be argued to what
extent Zelensky is a good actor. But he is certainly better as an actor than
president. This is the main, single impression from his speech from the
parliamentary tribune,” said Serhiy Rakhmanin, the head of the neoliberal Voice
party parliamentary faction. Regarding Donbas and Crimea, he pointed out that
“a plan had been announced on returning people and territory,” referring to an earlier report. Yet “I
didn’t hear any plan,” Rakhmanin said.

Zenon Zawada: We found
nothing new or innovative from Zelensky’s speech to parliament. We largely
agree with the view that it was a campaign speech days ahead of the vote, and
it wasn’t very convincing, at least from an informed point of view. The notion
that there’s a ceasefire in Donbas has been largely discreditedat this point, with more than one war-related casualty reported than Zelensky
has alleged.

The economic incentives for Donbas might be
valuable on a theoretical level, but the proposal won’t induce peace on the
ground. In our view, no amount of such incentives will restore trust among the
residents of Donbas, fully immersed in Putin’s Russian World at this point, in
the Ukrainian government. A Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll, conducted on Oct. 17-19,  revealed that more Ukrainians
oppose such economic breaks (45.3%) than support them (33.5%). At the same
time, the poll revealed the proposal is most popular in Ukraine’s eastern
regions, which could deliver a few votes.