Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor and a foreign affairs columnist at POLITICO Europe.
At a closed-door parliamentary meeting last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t disguise his indignation with domestic critics.
According to a pair of attending lawmakers — who spoke with POLITICO on condition of anonymity for fear of inviting presidential wrath — the Ukrainian leader vented his frustrations to his own Servant of the People party, bemoaning members of parliament, civil society activists and journalists for failing to promote an unwaveringly flattering image of Ukraine to Western partners.
The diatribe denouncing those who, in Zelenskyy’s words, were positioning themselves “against Ukraine” only added to what the lawmakers described as an encounter marked by underlying tension. Referring to reports about corruption and rights violations, the president combatively stated that Ukrainians saying anything negative about the situation inside the country were distracting from where the focus should be — on the war effort and bolstering support from foreign allies.
Lawmakers had expected Zelenskyy to be more mollifying and gentle in tone — especially in light of his attempt to gut Ukraine’s two key independent anti-graft agencies over the summer, which provoked the first nationwide street protests since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.
But as the Ukrainian leader focused on the state of the war and made clear his intention to run in any elections held after, these expectations weren’t met. And it appears it’s no longer just Zelenskyy’s partisan rivals who worry about a creeping monopolization of power.
Truth is, there have been growing qualms and grumbles within party ranks about Zelenskyy’s highly personalized method of rule and his tendency to be dismissive of parliament — plus, the move against the anti-corruption agencies still rankles some of his own lawmakers.
The President’s Office had ordered party lawmakers, many of whom were reluctant, to back the legislation subordinating the agencies to the politically appointed prosecutor general. But within a day of signing the law, Zelenskyy was forced to back down in the face of protests and European warnings about democratic backsliding. His aides then sought to shift blame to them for the whole fiasco — not an uncommon tactic when policies pushed by the President’s Office prove unpopular, they complain.
The whole episode left many lawmakers questioning how Zelenskyy and his advisers failed to anticipate such a ferocious public reaction in the first place. Opinion polls have consistently shown that even in wartime, Ukrainians rank corruption as the country’s main domestic problem.
Political opponents have long complained of the Ukrainian leader’s populist impatience with the constraints and complexities required to govern a democracy and of his innate prickliness to criticism. His defenders, however, are dismissive of the complaints, saying war requires a firm, decisive hand. Or, as Zelenskyy’s powerful Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak told POLITICO earlier this year: “Especially during wartime, decisions must be made quickly and clearly.” Presidential aides also point out their boss enjoys high favorability in opinion polls.
They do have a point — and even many critics agree that the clamor and messiness of democracy shouldn’t be allowed to imperil the country as it fights an existential war. But they also stress that other wartime leaders took a markedly different approach — notably Britain’s Winston Churchill, who was keen to harness the country’s best, brightest and most capable from across the political spectrum to fill the ranks of wartime bureaucracy.
And it isn’t just Zelenskyy’s partisan rivals who now worry about the drive to centralize power. While reticent to issue any public criticism for fear of handing Moscow a propaganda opening, according to three European envoys based in Kyiv who asked not to be identified for this article, Western allies have privately raised concerns. And some of the lawmakers in Zelenskyy’s party are also questioning recent developments— which have included firing elected mayors and exerting pressure on state agencies meant to be independent.
Even before the war, the government was impatient with parliamentary oversight. Now, having virtually abandoned the routine of ministers being questioned by parliament committees, it’s being shunned almost entirely. Noticeably, the presidential administration has also increasingly struggled to muster the votes it needs to approve favored legislation, partly because ruling lawmakers are growing frustrated with pressure to kowtow to the President’s Office and are worried they’ll be blamed by their constituents when things go wrong.
This unease predates the attempt to eviscerate the anti-corruption agencies. And a string of purges of more independent-minded ministers and government officials have prompted behind-the-scenes disquiet too. Recent government reshuffles have seen the forced departures of notable figures such as Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba, the head of Ukraine’s national power transmission network Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, and the highly popular armed forces commander General Valery Zaluzhny — now Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain — who clashed with Zelenskyy over war strategy.
Each reshuffle has seen the president’s clam-like coterie of trusted friends and advisers accrue more power and control, while outliers ready to question and challenge — or who show streaks of independence — get ejected. The party mood wasn’t improved by Zelenskyy’s notorious Oval Office spat with U.S. President Donald Trump either, as the Ukrainian leader veered dangerously off-script, thanks, in large part, to goading by U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
Displaying unusually autonomous behavior, and in what many viewed as implied criticism of Zelenskyy, Servant of the People lawmaker and Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament Ruslan Stefanchuk subsequently issued a statement saying Ukraine needed to repair relations with Trump quickly — hence the expectation that the Ukrainian leader would seek to reassure and appease his party in last week’s meeting.
But the two lawmakers who spoke to POLITICO said that’s not how things turned out. Zelenskyy was unhappy with the poor level of attendance, as around a hundred of his party’s lawmakers failed to turn up. And the underlying tension only grew when one of them questioned the wisdom of gutting the anti-corruption agencies at a time when they were zeroing in on presidential administration insiders.
While Zelenskyy did say he’d consult with them more in the future, “that seems unlikely,” one of the lawmakers lamented. “The whole narrative points to a further tightening of the screws at home. As far as the President’s Office sees it, you’re either with Zelenskyy or you’re a Russian stooge.”
Indeed, the screws are being tightened. Just this month, for example, a group of around 20 former and retired Ukrainian diplomats and envoys were included in a regulation banning lawmakers and officials from traveling overseas without the express approval of authorities.
“It is difficult to understand why, in the fourth year of the war, it suddenly became so important to ban a group of no more than 20 people from traveling abroad — people who have the contacts and authority to promote Ukraine’s interests among foreign audiences,” Kuleba, who is among those impacted, told POLITICO.
“The only explanation can be political. And once such political logic takes hold, it becomes possible to arbitrarily decide which categories of people are allowed or forbidden to do certain things. Ambassadors are only an example, but one that reveals a much deeper problem.”
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