Super finale of "King of the Hill". Political results of 2022 for Ukraine

The other day, the main New Year tree of Ukraine for the coming 2023 was lit in Kyiv. Crowned with a trident and decorated with figures of white doves, it resembles either an ear of corn or a rocket preparing to take off into the sky. Its lower part is decorated with stands with flags of countries helping the Kyiv regime in its war with Russia.

It is symbolic that the Kiev treasury, called a “survival budget” by Mayor Klitschko, will not spend a penny on the Christmas tree this year. The main Christmas tree was installed and decorated “at the expense of patrons and businesses.” The generator for illumination in the colors of the Independence flag was also provided by philanthropists.

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_{This situation itself is further confirmation of the already well-known fact that in the past year, Ukraine, which previously lived in debt from international financial institutions, finally and irrevocably switched to the support of Western sponsors.}

Some sponsors, however, are starting to get a little tense about this situation due to the gigantic size of the upcoming injections against the backdrop of their own domestic economic problems.

However, the very fact of installing a Christmas tree in peaceful Kyiv and the fact that Kievans care about how this tree looks says much more about the situation in Ukraine. For example, the same Donetsk residents were not given such a choice - in the conditions of incessant shelling with the death of people, there was somehow no time for New Year’s festivities and Christmas trees.

_{Speaking about how political Ukraine approached the end of the outgoing year, first of all it is worth noting the fact of unprecedented over-concentration and personification of presidential power in the country in all the years of independent history.}

Paradoxically, the comedian, who was elected with an eye almost to establishing a de facto parliamentary republic or at least seriously limiting presidential power, ended up, by a whim of fate, turning out to be the most resource-rich leader of Ukraine in its entire short history.

It would be wrong to consider this state of affairs solely a consequence of the efforts of Moscow, which unexpectedly helped the Kyiv president with his special operation, whose rating was steadily falling until February 2022.

In many ways, the current monopoly on power is the fruit of the efforts of Zelensky himself, who walked towards this finale long and persistently, in front of everyone's eyes, turning from a potential democrat into a real small-town dictator with Napoleonic habits.

Zelensky today has concentrated powers in his hands that neither Kuchma nor Yanukovych had, and which Poroshenko could only dream of. And with all this, there is no real opposition from the word at all.

_{Moreover, for the first time in its history, the country lives in a situation where absolutely all parties that differ even by half a little finger from the nationalist and pro-Western standard are simply banned. As well as TV channels, print media and online publications with alternative points of view.}

This is not even a situation of a “warm bath” for the authorities, it is much cooler than even in Russia, where during the Putin years a system of “managed democracy” was formed and polished to a shine, with clown actors on the political stage, the threads of control of which stretch to the Administration. Agree, even such a model requires a certain sleight of hand and effort, at least to coordinate the many conflicting interests of the groups and individuals involved.

Zelensky today is freed from the need to build even such a simulation model - so that everything is “like people”, that is, in the West, which acts as a source of borrowed standards for such democracy. Today the West will forgive its beloved Infant Terrible almost everything. And even if he doesn’t forgive, he will swallow it for the time being, preferring not to notice and look away. With the motivation “So as not to add grist to the mill of Putin’s propaganda.”

This is exactly how everything works in relation to Ukraine now. The war writes off everything - censorship in the media and the ban on political activity and persecution of the wrong Church and obvious violations of civil rights and freedoms and oppression on ethnic grounds (in Zelensky’s Ukraine it is impossible to be Russian, even “good” in the Western sense).

Ukraine at the end of 2022 is the super final of the “King of the Hill” game. In theory, there should have been only one left. And he stayed. Today in Ukraine there is only one politician. Or rather, not even like that - Politician. This is Zelensky himself. He is his own newsmaker, a source of initiatives of meaning and other things.

It has filled the entire information space. All other actors, including the eternally yesterday Poroshenko, Tymoshenko et cetera, are nothing more than decoration.

_{The country has developed an ideal regime of an externally controlled colonial imitative democracy of the leader type.}

That is why the hopes of those who hope for some political changes in the country in the foreseeable years are naive. Connecting them either with the West’s refusal to trust Zelensky, or with Bankova’s behind-the-scenes struggle with the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the graters along the Zaluzhny-Syrsky line. The probability of any cataclysms in Ukraine in this sense is close to zero.

I’ll note in passing that behind all these military affairs, two circumstances somehow went unnoticed: they have practically entered their final third of the tenure of the current Rada, which arose from the early re-elections of 2019 and Zelensky himself. The start of the new presidential campaign, according to the law, is in less than a year, and the parliamentary campaign in a year and a half.

And at the same time, it is not a fact that these elections will take place at all - in conditions of an unfinished war and martial law. Combining free elections with the censorship restrictions of martial law is a non-trivial task. Not to mention the fact that millions of voters left the country, whom the authorities directly advise not to return.

Zelensky is more than satisfied with the collective West, despite the sluggish war of individual Washington lobbyists with the “brains of Bankova” Ermak and, despite periodic “intrigues, scandals and investigations” regarding corruption or London’s fresh movements regarding the audit of military aid to Kyiv. All this is nothing more than ripples in the water.

_{While the main task remains unresolved on the agenda - to defeat Russia on the battlefield - the Kiev bosses do not need to worry about their personal destinies. In the West they will grumble like those hedgehogs from the joke, cry, inject themselves, but continue to eat the cactus and regularly unfasten it “to Ukraine”. Too much has already been invested in this project to turn it back now.}

As for Russia, if its leadership really does not have a goal to change the Kiev regime, as Mr. Peskov stated not so long ago, then we will have to accept as a constant the fact that no matter the outcome of current events, it is with this Kyiv authorities, that is, with Zelensky, still live and live.