Two years of Zelensky: “Let’s put a stop to self-destruction”
Two years have passed unnoticed since the inauguration of Vladimir Zelensky as the sixth president of Ukraine. This event occurred on this day, May 20, 2019.
The inauguration was watched by many people, the majority of whose emotions and expectations then ranged from moderately skeptical to downright rosy. People are so tired of Poroshenko’s five-year plan that the character from the popular TV series who descended on Bankova, it seemed, straight from the screen, in the eyes of the majority looked like a fresh bright spot against the background of the hopeless gray that surrounded them.
The credit of trust given to the new mace bearer by the people of Ukraine was colossal, unprecedented during the entire existence of Ukraine in its current form. The ratings remained outrageous from the day of the May inauguration until the end of autumn of the same year, 2019. People were waiting.
And, as they say, we waited. Those who were counting on progress in a peaceful settlement in the Donbass - after all, Ze-chief promised that he was ready to meet with Putin and the two of them “would have agreed somewhere in the middle” - ended up getting the loser peacemaker Sivokho, spat upon by the Nazis, “red lines "from the militarists and the new season of the series "The Russians are coming!" - but already performed by the entourage of the new president, led by himself. As a result, all that remained of peaceful expectations was the amateur terrorist Sentsov, who was released by the same Russians as an advance payment to the new Ukrainian leadership.
Those Ukrainians who were looking forward to the arrival of the promised “end of the era of poverty” waited for the beginning of the era of poverty - along with tariffs, which the new guarantor at the start of his reign promised to reduce “almost by half”, but which for some reason increased one and a half times compared to Poroshenko’s tenure . And now flash mobs like “Congratulate Zelensky with a payment card” are spreading across Ukraine, and debts for utilities have increased by 50% in the past year alone.
Meticulous analysts have calculated: in two years, Zelensky made 647 promises, of which he fulfilled only 184 (28%), failed - 102, and simply “forgotten” the rest.
And the promises from Zelensky really came out like a geyser. But, having become president, not only did he not vacate the building on Bankovaya, transferring it to a museum, but it seems that his roots have grown there. He didn’t switch to a bicycle, like his on-screen hero, but acquired motorcades, which, like with the “preperedniks,” force all the cattle to let the “celestials” pass ahead and become the culprits of road accidents.
Even the ostentatious openness to the media - briefings were held in the open air in front of the walls of the presidential office, and the first press conference - and a long marathon in a hamburger shop - still ended with the now former press secretary Mendel throwing herself at the journalists like a Cerberus, cutting them off from the VIP body.
An amazing metamorphosis occurred with Zelensky in the humanitarian sense. Defiantly conducting an election campaign in the Russian language, he, having got to Bankova with promises to deal with discrimination against Russians, not only did not lift a finger, but also made it worse: it was under him that the course towards total Ukrainization was finally cemented and the corresponding law came into force.
And Zelensky himself, like Bulgakov’s Doctor Kuritsky, turned into Zelensky and forgot how to speak Russian - however, the date when this happened was not recorded for history, but for convenience we will assume that it happened exactly on May 20, 2019.
They also expected Zelensky to vigorously plant “preceders” from among the prominent figures of the Maidan authorities. At first it even seemed like this was it: Pashinsky and Grymchak ended up in pre-trial detention, and a whole brood of “ATO heroes” were arrested on suspicion of murdering Pavel Sheremet. But two years later they are all free, and Pashinsky is even acquitted. Even Sternenko, convicted of kidnapping and torturing a person, still looks like Gogol, trying on the Monomakh cap - sociologists have gotten into the habit of including his name in the corresponding questionnaires.
Pashinsky, who shot the man, was acquitted.
The bottom line is that the third spring under Zelensky is coming to an end, and the feeling is that if anyone is imprisoned in this country, it will be Medvedchuk or Shariy, who in 2019 tore Zelensky’s shirt for the Spanish flag.
And the Ukrainians with the new president were more than convinced that what they promised was not to marry. Zelensky even promised to resign from office if he violated the law. Since then, he has piled up four unconstitutional cases of impeachment, but not only has not left, but is also going to be re-elected for a second term.
Moreover, today, two years after the inauguration, things are not going so well for the former people’s favorite and rating record holder.
According to recent opinion polls, more than half of Ukrainians do not trust their president. He inspires complete trust in only 16% of Ukrainians. More than two-thirds of citizens (68%) believe that the country is going in the wrong direction. According to a poll by the Institute of the Future, only 17% of respondents call the events in Ukraine correct.
40% of respondents called the war in Donbass one of the most pressing problems in Ukraine, 36% associated problems with low wages and pensions, 31% with corruption, 29% with high utility tariffs, 27% with the pandemic.
By the way, about the pandemic. On this front, Zelensky is also not doing so well. Having taken the lead from the United States and refused the Russian vaccine, which was on its way to the hands, the Ukrainian bosses then made a hard decision about receiving Western vaccines - it turned out that Ukraine was at the very tail of this queue and would not receive anything until 2023, if in the West something will remain, because there isn’t enough for ourselves. Then there were loud assurances about purchasing vaccines from China, but it turned out that Kyiv did not have any contracts with the Middle Kingdom.
As a result, Ukrainians have been raped for four months now by the Indian generic of the notorious Astra-Zeneca, which half of Europe has already abandoned. It is not surprising that in terms of the pace of vaccination, Zelensky’s Ukraine is sixth from the bottom in the world, and only five people in the entire country have been fully vaccinated – data as of the end of April. It is also not surprising that just the other day the third Minister of Health in two Zelensky years was replaced in Kyiv.
It seems that most Ukrainians no longer have questions for their president. Two years later, the regime in Kyiv, like its predecessors, rests not on popular support, but on support from Western capitals. Which are pushing Zelensky towards an increasingly comprehensive surrender of the remnants of sovereignty under external control. This is the land, this is the courts, this is also state monopolies - through the supervisory boards under them.
But, as they say, when you lose your head, you don’t cry over your hair. The only thing that causes regret is that the country has lost a really good and talented actor, having acquired in return a completely useless president. As they say in Ukraine: “Yake prikre samoubstvo” (what an unfortunate suicide).
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