Is Volodymyr Zelenskyy serious about quitting?
Ukrainians appear reluctant to take at face value his claim during an interview last month that he’s “ready not to go for the second term because it’s not my goal.”
In fact, it hardly caused a ripple of interest. And from political opponents it drew scorn and disbelief.
Of course, it isn’t the first time Zelenskyy has talked about a readiness to quit. He did so last winter. Then relations were especially fraught with the White House, as U.S. President Donald Trump and his aides were echoing a Kremlin talking point by accusing the Ukrainian leader of being a “dictator” for not holding elections.
His accusers handily overlooked the fact that the Ukrainian constitution prohibits elections during wartime while martial law is in effect. Nonetheless, in a move presumably aiming to take the sting out of the “autocrat” allegation, Zelenskyy announced dramatically that he was “ready” to go if his resignation would help secure a ceasefire with Russia and gain Ukraine’s admission into NATO.
“If [it guarantees] peace for Ukraine, if you really need me to resign, I am ready. I can exchange it for NATO,” he said.
This time round he told Axios: “My goal is to finish the war” and not necessarily to continue to run for office. He also vowed to ask Ukraine’s parliament to organize elections if a ceasefire is agreed. Presumably that would mean martial law would have to be lifted or there would have to be some legal maneuver to circumvent the constitutional ban.
Ukraine’s former Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, from the country’s opposition, takes the president’s talk about removing himself from the political scene with a barrel of salt. “Many of Zelenskyy’s actions point in the opposite direction,” she told POLITICO. “Deeds and not words matter.”
Indeed, she isn’t alone in discounting Zelenskyy’s naysaying. Lawmakers from Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People party didn’t leave a rare closed-door meeting with him last month under the impression he was actually thinking about calling it a day when the war is over. He seemed bullish about his prospects of winning reelection, a pair of lawmakers told POLITICO, and lashed out at opponents and critics, bemoaning members of parliament, civil society activists and journalists for failing to promote an unwaveringly flattering image of Ukraine to Western partners.
In fact, partisan politics, very much a muscular, no-holds-barred sport in Ukraine, appears to have come roaring back. That has been triggered by an ill-judged — and ultimately aborted, under domestic and international pressure — maneuver in the summer by Zelenskyy and his aides to try to strip two key anti-corruption agencies of their independence just as both were starting in earnest to probe presidential office insiders.
That effort — to halt probes into allies — is now widely seen by Zelenskyy’s rivals as being part and parcel of a stealthy albeit rough campaign by the President’s Office to prepare for an election down the road by ensuring opponents are placed at a disadvantage.
“After what happened in July with the anti-corruption bodies, politics in Ukraine is back,” said a former Ukrainian minister. “It’s impossible to hide it.” He asked not to be identified for this article in order to avoid the ire of the president’s aides who, he says, are using lawfare to intimidate and silence critics and political opponents.
Another former minister agrees, arguing that Zelenskyy’s aides are using all the power and tools at their disposal to smear and hamper rivals to tilt the playing field.
“Essentially, the tactic is that ‘you say something against us, we open up criminal proceedings against you and sanction you,’” he told POLITICO after being granted anonymity to speak freely. “They’re essentially blackmailing all their potential opponents or perceived opponents.”
Lawfare against opponents, often involving allegations of treason and nefarious ties to Russia, isn’t a new tactic. Shortly after Zelenskyy’s election in 2019, more than 20 criminal cases, including one for high treason, were opened against the man he beat, Petro Poroshenko, the former Ukrainian president. And in February, Zelenskyy signed a decree sanctioning Poroshenko — in effect freezing his assets in Ukraine and blocking him from conducting financial transactions — prompting criticism and allegations of a “politically motivated” witch hunt.
But lawfare is being used even more aggressively, both ministers say. And despite having had their independence restored, the anti-corruption agencies also remain in the bullseye. The climbdown over their independence has been replaced by a covert clampdown on the agencies, prominent civil society activists claim. They allege the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is being used in a campaign of intimidation against the anti-corruption bodies and to block probes into presidential insiders.
In July, as protests mounted to protect the integrity of the agencies, SBU agents raided the offices of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and its Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) and also conducted at least 80 searches targeting their employees and investigators across the country. The SBU raiding parties gained access to sensitive case files, according to NABU. Since then raids have been mounted against former anti-corruption detectives who worked on sensitive cases. According to Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, an NGO: “Zelenskyy and the SBU’s immediate goal is to discredit the entire anti-corruption system.”
Others point to an uptick in SBU investigations into a handful of former generals on charges of negligence in the early months of the war as likely evidence of alarm in the President’s Office over a possible election challenge by the former armed forces commander, Valery Zaluzhny. Dismissed after a fallout over war tactics, Zaluzhny is viewed by many as Zelenskyy’s likely main potential challenger. A survey in the summer by the Rating Sociological Group suggested the incumbent would secure 35.2 percent of the vote, with 25.3 percent going to Zaluzhny. Nonetheless Zelenskyy could well struggle in a second round to best the former commander-in-chief, now Ukraine’s envoy to Britain.
“Criminal cases against generals for losses endured in 2022 is a potential leverage [that] presidential aides are weighing to use against Zaluzhny,” said one of the former ministers. Another former senior defense official disagreed, saying none of the generals were that close to Zaluzhny or much associated with him, and that the probes are being undertaken to uphold the rule of law.
Maybe so, but last week Zaluzhny for the first time inched closer to criticizing Zelenskyy publicly than at any time since his dismissal, albeit indirectly in an op-ed slamming Ukraine’s Kursk offensive. The operation had been touted by Ukraine’s leader as a success, but Zaluzhny’s article said the losses had been “devastating” and the gains only marginal.
Coincidence, or has the election starting pistol been fired?
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