Ukraine’s Parliament is in a state of disarray.
Under martial law, with the country at war, no elections are possible to replace members who switched jobs, joined the army, fled the country or quit. The Parliament regularly gathers with more than 10 percent of its lawmakers absent.
Though legally obliged to attend hearings when summoned, ministers sometimes do not show up, without repercussions.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party, once a political juggernaut, has in effect lost its majority by unraveling into factions. To pass key bills, it is forced to rely on support from lawmakers who belonged to a now-banned pro-Russian party.
The overall picture, said Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst, is of a Parliament sidelined during the war and slipping from its once powerful role in Ukrainian democracy.
“In a state of martial law, with our centralization of state management and the end of public politics, Parliament lost its influence,” Mr. Fesenko said.
The dysfunction in Parliament, and the unusual voting alliance between the governing party and former members of the disbanded pro-Russian party, has dented the government’s credibility as it struggles to reset its war effort after months of Russian advances.
The disarray thwarts any meaningful role for the Parliament in the oversight of government agencies, critics say, even as billions of dollars in foreign aid money pours into Ukraine. Accusations of corruption or mismanagement emerge regularly: In May, an official overseeing mostly Western-financed reconstruction in Ukraine resigned, citing poor management of funds.
The tumult has also intensified criticism that too much power is concentrated in the president’s office, beyond what is already granted under martial law. That has been a focus of Mr. Zelensky’s critics since the beginning of the war, when he consolidated television outlets under one state-run station and curbed the ability of ministers to act independently.
Nobody is alleging serious infractions of the Constitution. A majority of Ukrainians still support Mr. Zelensky, though that number has fallen, and even his critics concede that war requires some centralization of decision making.
That the Parliament has even convened during the war counts as a success, some lawmakers and outside analysts say. Early in the invasion, members gathered only hastily, in secret, then quickly scattered from the domed Parliament building in Kyiv, lest a Russian missile kill or injure all of them in a single strike. After air defenses improved, regular sessions resumed.
Under the Constitution, Ukraine’s Parliament is intended to wield more power than the presidency. Parliament appoints most ministers and approves the smaller number appointed by the president. It has played pivotal, independent roles in past crises. But not during this war.
Part of the problem is that Mr. Zelensky’s party, called Servant of the People, is itself hindered by turf wars and infighting.
Divisions that emerged before the invasion have only deepened. The unanimous votes that signaled solidarity early in the invasion are a faded memory. The war muddles party discipline; rogue voting is grudgingly tolerated.
In one example, about 20 members of Parliament have formed a faction opposed to Mr. Zelensky; 15 of them formally remain in the president’s party.
There are currently four parties represented in the 450-seat chamber: Mr. Zelensky’s Servant of the People, European Solidarity, Fatherland and Holos.
Servant of the People won a majority of seats in elections in 2019 that aligned Parliament with the presidency. It still holds a nominal majority of 235 seats but in fact the party’s leadership rarely musters the necessary votes to pass legislation. In the more than 5,000 votes in Parliament in 2022 and 2023, the party secured a majority by itself in only 17 instances, or less than 1 percent of votes, according to Chesno, a Ukrainian analytical group.
Instead, the party has formed a strange bedfellows political partnership with the remnants of a party called Opposition Bloc that was officially disbanded in 2022 for ties to Russia. Together they have passed legislation to expand the draft, critically important for Ukraine’s war effort, and to shape oversight of agencies and rules intended to safeguard foreign aid.
Critics of this alliance say it has weakened the independence of Parliament, because the former pro-Russian politicians are at risk of prosecution for treason and hardly able to provide effective oversight.
One bill, passed in December, regulates building codes for reconstruction work and drew criticism for including provisions favored by developers. That bill shifts some building approvals from local governments to the central government, raising concerns that communities will lack a voice in how rebuilding funds are spent.
Vast sums are at stake in rebuilding. The Kyiv School of Economics has estimated that total reconstruction costs in Ukraine will run to $155 billion.
Last month, Servant of the People again aligned with former Opposition Bloc lawmakers to vote on amendments to a bill defining the powers of a new financial oversight agency, which removes financial investigations from the purview of the domestic intelligence agency. The intelligence agency has been mired in controversy for years over politically hued investigations and corruption.
Mr. Zelensky needed to create a new agency because it was one of the requirements from Brussels in Ukraine’s effort to join the European Union, said Oleksandr Zaslavsky, an analyst at the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, an analytical group in Kyiv. So the vote only underscored how dependent Mr. Zelensky has become on the formerly pro-Russian lawmakers to pass key bills.
This informal coalition has allowed Mr. Zelensky’s party to avoid compromises with a main political opposition group, European Solidarity, the party of Mr. Zelensky’s political nemesis, former President Petro Poroshenko. Some members of other opposition parties and factions have also provided votes to pass key legislation, along with former members of Opposition Bloc.
A spokeswoman for Davyd Arakhamia, the leader of the Servant of the People faction in Parliament, declined an interview for scheduling reasons and a spokeswoman for Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of Parliament, did not respond to a request for an interview. The office of Mr. Zelensky did not respond to a request for comment.
Also drawing criticism are restrictions that prevent opposition party members from leaving the country to meet allied governments — at a time when about half the budget is foreign aid.
These restrictions, and the unusual alliance with the former pro-Russian party members, mean “Parliament is excluded from decision making,” said Dmytro Razumkov, a former speaker now in the political opposition.
“It accepts decisions but without an ability to influence them” he said.
Even the leader of the Servant of the People faction, Mr. Arakhamia, voiced woes about the state of the institution earlier this year. In a statement in January, he said “a great crisis is approaching.”
Yuriy Boyko, once a leader of Opposition Bloc, which is widely reviled in Ukraine, said Moscow’s invasion in 2022 shifted his views on Russia and that his focus has been supporting Mr. Zelensky during the war.
“War changed our minds,” he said of his former backing for closer ties with Moscow.
He conceded that “some of our former members became traitors” but said those who remained were working to support the war effort by voting for government-sponsored legislation. This year, he said, 29 laws had passed that would not have done so without the support of former Opposition Bloc lawmakers. He said his group had disagreed with government on some tax and customs legislation.
Oleksii Goncharenko, a member of the opposition European Solidarity party, has argued that constructive opposition in Parliament is important even during the war. That is not provided, he suggested, by the former members of the pro-Russian party, because they are at risk of prosecution.
“It’s unfair these people are not prosecuted and it’s unfair they are still in Parliament,” he said. He has submitted draft legislation to expel them from the chamber. That has not happened, he said, “because their votes are needed” by Mr. Zelensky’s government.
As a result, he said, “Parliament works as a notary, just putting a stamp on what comes from the president.”
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