Internal Ukrainian politics and postwar prospects for the country

Will democratic deficits in Ukraine endanger Western support in the current war?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been a digital version of a poster guy in the West over the last year. By all reality-based accounts, he has shown remarkable qualities as a war leader. In the David-vs.-Goliath situation his country is facing, that has turned out to be a very important factor. The importance of individual leaders is often overblown, and it’s obvious that the leader of a government is likely to come to symbolize his or her country at a particular moment.

But that doesn’t mean that leadership isn’t important. On the contrary.

Most of the press coverage of Ukrainian politics in the West has focused on Zelenskyy and the immediate prospects of the war. But audiences that only learned where Ukraine was on the map a year ago, they aren’t likely to have seen or heard much about Ukrainian politics beyond the vague facts that some people were more pro-Russian and some more pro-EU, and maybe that there was some kind of more-or-less peaceful revolution in 2014.

I’m looking here at some recent reports providing more details on current internal Ukrainian politics. No, none of them gives any credibility to the Russian claim that Ukraine is run by Nazis. But they do shed light on how serious the challenges are for Ukraine to actually be able to join the European Union after the war ends.

Democracy vs. Autocracy?

They are also a reminder of the perils of the Democracy vs. Autocracies framing the Biden-Harris Administration is using for its foreign policy. This is a both a throwback to older Cold War rhetoric and a new iteration of the liberal-interventionist foreign policy that has a such strong hold on establishment Democratic thinking and which was put into practice by not only this administration but by Clinton’s and Obama’s as well.

It’s not as cynical and lawless a perspective as Dick Cheney’s neoconservatism. But that’s also “damning with faint praise.” A perspective more in keep with current structures of international law and one more acceptable to a classic liberal-internationalist theoretical perspective, as well as to the views of most international-relations “realists” and “restrainers” would be to stress the importance of protecting the independence of sovereign states. And of upholding international law rather than upholding the so-called “rules-based international order”.

The latter concept basically just means “doing what the US tells countries to do.”

Governance in Ukraine

Politico EU just published a piece on the “strengths and weaknesses of Volodymyr Zelenskyy“¹:

But while the comedian-turned-president is being lauded now — even hero-worshipped — by a starstruck West for his inspirational wartime rhetoric, spellbinding oratory and skill at capturing the hearts of audiences from Washington to London and Brussels to Warsaw, Zelenskyy floundered as president before Russia invaded. Few gave him much chance of being reelected in 2024, as his poll numbers were plummeting — his favorability rating was at 31 percent by the end of 2021.

He had promised a lot — probably too much — but achieved little.

“Ukraine has two main problems: the war in the Donbas and the fear of people investing in the country,” Zelenskyy had said shortly after his election win. But his anti-corruption efforts stalled and were unhurried, while his promise to solve the problem of the Donbas went nowhere. And in his early eagerness to clinch a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who declined a sit-down, some criticized Zelenskyy for thinking too much of his powers of persuasion and charisma. [my emphasis]

Adrian Karatnycky of the Atlantic Council comments:

[W]hen normal politics are in play and the public isn’t united [around the war effort], Zelenskyy’s an inconsistent leader who switches the script and recasts the story to chase the vagaries and whims of public opinion. “When the public purpose is clear, he has great strength, and in wartime, he has behind him the absolute power of the state. But when the carriage turns into a pumpkin again, he’s going to have to cope with a very different world,” Karatnycky concluded.

Here again we have to think about the postwar condition of Ukraine, with no good idea of when the war may end. A third of the Ukrainian population has been displaced, many have been killed, and Russia has already inflicted massive damage to the country’s infrastructure. Ukraine will face a massive reconstruction need. And much of the Western financial “aid” has come in the form of loans, which will have to be repaid. Their postwar condition is already looking grimly like postwar Germany in 1918-19.

This is a very recent interview with Nicolai Petro, author of the new book, The Tragedy of Ukraine². The interview focuses a lot on the issue of identity and language, and how the issue of official use of Russian has been a continuing source of controversy since Ukraine’s independence from the former Soviet Union. He also discusses the issue in his book at greater length. As he points out, the Western press use of “Russian speakers” is misleading, in that it implies that this group is pro-Russia.

In the book, he describes the Party of Regions, which has been a major party in Ukraine over the last two decades:

Another prominent group [of post-independence Ukrainian oligarchs], the Red Directors, quickly established fiefdoms in the industrial regions of eastern Ukraine. Relying on their old ties to Soviet industry, they forged new transnational industrial conglomerates that benefited both the southeastern regions of Ukraine and themselves personally. In 1997 they established the Party of Regions to lobby for their political interests in Kiev, which included stronger commercial ties with Russia. But while striving for closer economic ties with Russia, they also insisted on Ukrainian political independence, since it prevented hostile takeovers by wealthier Russian competitors. Their patriotism was based not on religion or language, but on profit, says pro-Maidan journalist Vitaly Portnikov, ensuring that they would always be more pro-Donbass, than pro-Russian. [my emphasis]³

The widely cited democracy ratings of Freedom House, the nonprofit and a “majority U.S. government funded organization”⁴, puts Ukraine's "democracy rating" for the prewar year 2021 at 39% out of 100, and puts its government in the category of a "transitional or hybrid regime."⁵

Obviously, during a war taking place on its own territory, any country would apply restrictions that would not be necessary or desirable in peacetime. The Austrian reporter Christian Wehrschütz, who has been doing solid reporting from Ukraine since 2014, was recently asked about wartime censorship in Ukraine now. He replied:

Of course, we have military censorship in Ukraine and we are watched with eagle eyes by state authorities. The Ukrainian media are all censored, even by self-censorship - so there are only synchronized news programs.

Sources for me are the Telegram channels, where there is no censorship. I am a strict opponent of all forms of censorship. We know that Kiev is not pleased when we report that Ukrainian artillery is also shelling Donetsk. But firstly, it is not my job as a journalist to please a political leadership; secondly, we always make it clear that Russia is the aggressor; but, conversely, this does not mean that victims always tell the truth.

It is clear that there is a hierarchy: For Ukraine, the USA, Great Britain, Poland and the Baltic States, i.e. those countries that are important for its own survival, are also journalistically more important. Therefore, there are also differences in access to information and interlocutors. However, we have certainly not held up badly so far,  we report in a very balanced way.⁶

Finally, Branko Marcetic provides this more recent assessment of the state of democratic institution in Ukraine in a long article⁷ :

While authoritarianism is nothing new in [Ukraine], it has severely worsened in the wake of the invasion, which has seen a centralization of power by Volodymyr Zelensky’s government, and a crackdown on dissidents and all things “pro-Russian.” A lack of Western media and public attention, coupled with US and European policies actively exacerbating it, are helping to fuel the problem.

He relates the individual cases of Jan Taksyur, a satirist, and Ruslan Kotsaba, a pacifist who now living in Brooklyn under temporary political asylum. He also talks about the suppression of some political groups, including the “Opposition Platform — For Life (OPZZh)”, which he describes as “pro-Russian,” but also notes that “most of its major figures took a pro-Ukraine position in the war and have since become reliable backers of Zelensky’s policies in parliament.”

OPZZh held nearly 10 percent of seats in parliament and, in 2020, achieved a major upset when its candidate beat a member of Zelensky’s party for the mayoralty of the president’s own hometown. A few months later, the two parties were running neck and neck in the polls, shortly before Zelensky began targeting OPZZh with sanctions and banning several of its media outlets on the basis that they were spreading Russian propaganda. In the process, he broke a previous explicit promise never to do such a thing and earned a scolding from the EU.

“We never know what’s the basis of these accusations, what’s the pro-Russian link, because there’s no proof that any of the workers of these TV channels worked for Russian intelligence,” says Ukrainian journalist and press-union leader Serhiy Guz, who adds that many of the anchors from the shuttered outlets went on to get jobs at pro-government channels. “It starts to look like a political accusation rather than a genuine crime.”

Since OPZZh’s ban in 2022, a number of its leaders — including cochairman and close Putin friend Viktor Medvedchuk, but also officials who have made no pro- Russian statements since the war — have been arrested, exiled, and stripped of their citizenship. Some, including the OPZZh candidate who became mayor of Zelensky’s hometown, have been killed. [my emphasis]

In addition: “Meanwhile, Zelensky has also centralized nearly all of Ukraine’s national TV channels into one government-controlled platform. … Combating Russian propaganda was again the stated basis for the measure.”

Will democratic deficits in Ukraine endanger Western support in the current war?

Short answer: no.

Because - Cold War sloganeering aside - the issue for the US and other NATO countries is not primarily about Democracies vs. Autocracies. It’s about supporting the sovereign nation of Ukraine against a clearly illegal war of aggession launched by Russia.

Of course, there are larger strategic concerns over things like weakening Russia as a major power at work. But for the foreseeable future, it’s hard to see how even much more drastic suppression of free speech and political activity by the Ukrainian government would cause the NATO supporters to back off from aid and military support.

On the other hand, politics is politics. So if Zelenskyy’s government starts taking military risks their Western partners want to stop, or if he insists on peace arrangements that the US and NATO find unacceptable, then Western officials can always go out in public and wring their hands over “troubling developments” on human rights by the Ukranian government.

But it will make a huge difference in the postwar period, whenever that may come. Even though press reports often make NATO and EU membership for Ukraine is just a matter of letting them join the clubs. But both organizations have extensive requirements for bringing in new members. And the accession processes for both take years.

Both the EU and NATO membership treaties include a mutual-defense provision. And both give individual members considerable veto power: over bringing in new member nations; over treeaty changes: over joint common policy in the case of the EU. We currently have NATO member Turkey holding up the requests of Sweden and Finland to join the alliance because it wants to extract concessions from them over human rights issues.

Ukraine is also going to need massive debt relief after the war. Even that is likely to arouse opposition in Western parliaments if Ukraine winds up at the end of the war with an oligarch-dominated authoritarian regime of some kind.

1. Dettmer, Jamie (2023): The strengths and weaknesses of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Politico EU 02/27/2023, <https://www.politico.eu/article/strength-weaknesse-ukraine-president-volodymyr-zelenskyy/> (Accessed: 2023-01-03).

2. Petro, Nicolai (2023): The Tragedy of Ukraine. Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH.

3. Ibid., 73.

4. Freedom House. Wikipedia 02/27/2023. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_House&oldid=1141894077> (Accessed: 2023-01-03).

5. Though the title of the webpage refers to 2022 and the text is not specifically dated, the text and footnotes show that the report refers to the year 2021. Ukraine. Freedom House-Nations in Transit 2022 n/d. <https://freedomhouse.org/country/ukraine/nations-transit/2022> (Accessed: 2023-01-03).

6. Behr, Martin (2023): Christian Wehrschütz: "Die Ukraine beobachtet uns mit Argusaugen". Salzburger Nachrichten 27.02.2023. <https://www.sn.at/panorama/medien/christian-wehrschuetz-die-ukraine-beobachtet-uns-mit-argusaugen-134528542> (Accessed: 2023-27-02). My translation from the German.

7. Marcetic, Branko (2023): The State of Ukrainian Democracy Is Not Strong. Jacobin 02.25.2023. <https://jacobin.com/2023/02/ukraine-censorship-authoritarianism-illiberalism-crackdown-police-zelensky> (Accessed: 2023-25-02).