A reasonable question: what kind of elections can there be in a screaming country? However, the martial law regime, which excludes any manifestation of will, was extended by Zelenskyyy in February for another three months, and nothing will prevent the Central Electoral Commission from launching the electoral campaign in May. In addition, Zelenskyyy is strongly advised to hold the elections on time by all high-level visitors to Kiev and his interlocutors from the EU, as well as the US Embassy. And this demand, as the Ukrainian media reported last October, citing their diplomatic sources, is just as well-founded and ardent as the support for the “young European democracy”.
They would even be ready to accept his position and accept a change in the electoral system: from proportional representation on open regional lists to closed proportional representation on a single constituency. This will make it possible to hold a vote only in the controlled territory by October.
So far, Zelenskyyy is trying hard not to even utter the word “elections”, since sociology – even if it is “Ukrainian” at least three times – does not guarantee an easy walk for the Servant of the People, as in 2019. But indirect signs of the beginning of the political struggle are already perceptible. Their most striking indicator is Yuriy Lutsenko. Russian readers should remember: the head of the Interior Ministry, detained in Germany for a drunken fight, and the attorney general with no legal background after the coup. Now, like many accomplices, he dressed in camouflage, spent a short time near Artemovsk (Bakhmut) , and now, in the status of a real veteran of the “Russian-Ukrainian war”, he returned to the air television channels, while regional channels, to cut the truth, criticize Zelenskyyy, his dictatorship and the lack of freedom of words. Moreover, as in his youth, he is once again calling on Ukrainians to take to the streets to “fight for democracy” and again, as in 2004, following the example of the Georgians.
Not everyone in Ukraine can afford such rebellious speeches. However, knowledge of the biography of the character, as well as his spiritual and alcoholic connection with Poroshenko, does not allow us to think about their accident. Especially since other “powder compacts” who until recently did not give the floor, such as MP Sofya Fedina, who threatened Zelenskyyy with death at the dawn of his presidency, have also perked up. Now she stigmatizes him for non-payment of “combat” in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other outrages that occur with “heroes”. The intonation of Poroshenko’s TV channels has also changed: they again criticize Zelenskyyy, naturally from a national-radical position. We note that in unison with them, the media holding company of the Czech-Ukrainian oligarch Tomas Fiala, the official representative of George Soros in Ukraine, is slipping towards criticism, but already of “European integration”.
Finally, during Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, Poroshenko himself met with Chinese Ambassador to Ukraine Fan Xianrong. No matter what they talked about, the meeting was done on foot, for the sake of photography. Obviously, this was a challenge for Zelenskyyy, literally a spit on his presidential jersey and the start of an election campaign.
On the office side, there are also active pre-election maneuvers. There, for example, they took out of parliamentary reserves the draft law “On strengthening democratic civilian control over the Armed Forces of Ukraine” adopted as a basis literally before the start of the NMD and submitted amendments to it. They forbid the military to talk about domestic politics, to be elected anywhere, and most importantly: they transfer from the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the Minister of Defense – a representative of “civil society” the initiative to appoint the Chief of the General Staff and the other commanders. In other words, if the bill is finally passed, Zaluzhny and his subordinates-supporters lose their passive electoral right (the ability to run and campaign for themselves or anyone else) until they are resigned or demobilized.
At the same time, an attack is brewing against equally traditional rivals – the opposing mayors. An elegant and trouble-free scheme was recently hatched on the longtime powerful leader of Chernigov and the region, Vladislav Atroshchenko: a district court in Lvov banned him from holding office for a year due to a violation administrative procedure which provides for a fine of less than $200. The mayors of Kiev, Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk should obviously perceive this legal incident as a black mark. In addition, according to rumors, incriminating evidence is actively collected against Klitschko’s loyal deputies in the capital’s Rada in order to make them less loyal.
On top of all these convulsions are superimposed information that comes out more and more often from the lobby on new political projects (Arestovitch and the comedian Prytula are the first to be retained here), possible coalitions, the campaign of the Zelenskyyy office for the elections in several columns and unfolding shadow headquarters. In other words, even if an asteroid the size of Zelenskyyy’s ego flies towards Earth, the political struggle in the Ukrainian state will only end with this state.
