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Is Zelensky Attempting to Hold On to Power?
Foreign Affairs
Is Zelensky Attempting to Hold On to Power?
Restrictions of civil freedoms in Ukraine have become more draconian.
(Photo by Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via Getty Images)
If the war in Ukraine is, as U.S. President Joe Biden says, “a battle between democracy and autocracy,” then the leader of Ukraine may be undermining the “great battle” by undermining democracy.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky declared, “The war in Ukraine is a war in general for values: life, democracy, freedom.” He rallies world support by saying that, in its fight against Russia, Ukraine is “protect[ing] the world” by “fight[ing] for democracy.” Biden and Zelensky frame the war in Ukraine as the frontline of a larger war of democracy versus autocracy.
But since being elected, Zelensky has legislated a number of moves that have the appearance of being antidemocratic. These moves are justified as necessary compromises to combat the Russian invasion. Closer examination, though, suggests that these antidemocratic moves do little in the service of defending Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. And that raises the question of whether they are antidemocratic not out of temporary necessity but by design. It forces consideration of the question of whether their true purpose is to establish a monocultural Ukraine, purged of Russian culture, and to establish Zelensky in power in that Ukraine.
Much of the focus of what little enquiry there has been into Zelensky’s consolidation of power has been on his decision not to hold elections during the war. Zelensky’s term in office came to an end on May 20, 2024. But this focus may be more of a distraction from more serious challenges to democracy. Elections are prohibited by Ukrainian law, although not by its constitution, in periods of martial law. Though Zelensky has hinted before that elections could be held during the war, he has ruled out doing so.
It is true that, under the circumstances, elections would be a challenge, and many Ukrainians do not support holding them during the war. A survey conducted in February 2024 found that 49 percent of Ukrainians strongly oppose it and 18 percent rather oppose it, although the poll probably suffers from the methodological problem of excluding those in the eastern regions and those who have left Ukraine.
There may be more serious challenges to democracy in a country where some say that, whether or not Zelensky’s continued term in office is legitimate, he increasingly holds sole power. The former Minister of Internal Affairs and ex-Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko told Germany’s Die Welt that, in a supposedly democratic Ukraine, “Zelensky rules as a sole decision-making autocrat” who “makes decisions alone.”
More serious still are what appear to be undemocratic assaults on political freedom and freedom of the press and expression.
In March 2022, Zelensky signed a law that formally banned eleven opposition political parties, including the Opposition Platform for Life party that was once the second largest party in the Ukrainian parliament, holding 10 percent of the seats. Three of the banned parties took part in the 2019 elections and, combined, won 18.3 percent of the vote. The sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko of Freie University in Berlin reports that polls taken just before Russia’s invasion showed them collectively polling between 16 and 20%.
Banning the parties was justified by their “links with Russia.” But in his new book, Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War, Ishchenko points out that “practically every leader and sponsor of these parties with any real influence in Ukraine condemned Russia’s invasion, and such people are now contributing to Ukraine’s defense.”
The ban on opposition parties was not a necessary compromise that addressed Ukraine’s immediate security needs. The ban got parties that represented the cultural rights of ethnic Russians in the east of Ukraine and stood against a monocultural Ukraine out of the way. It was a ban that removed opposition to Zelensky and helped consolidate his hold on power.
The timing may have had less to do with the Russian invasion than with polling that, by 2021, was showing Zelensky’s popularity on the decline. The Opposition Platform was ahead of Zelensky in some polls. Banning this party and sanctioning Viktor Medvedchuk, one of its leaders, may have had more to do with Zelensky’s political ambitions than with a temporary necessity mandated by security concerns. “A more realistic explanation,” Ishchenko says, “is that Zelenskyi targeted the leader of a rival party, which was rapidly gaining popularity.” Similar questions might be raised by the banishment to London of the most recent potential rival to Zelensky, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhny.
A similar possibility arises from a closer look at limits being imposed on the freedom of the press and of expression. The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought in its wake severe constrictions of and restrictions on the media in Ukraine.
“Since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022,” the New York Times reports, “the people of Ukraine have had access to a single source of television news.” That single source is called Telemarathon United News. Enacted on March 18, 2022, a presidential decree implemented “a unified information policy . . . by unifying all national TV channels, the programming content of which consists mainly of information and/or information and analytical programs on a single information platform of strategic communication – 24-hour informational marathon.”
Zelensky has proffered the single source news as a necessary compromise for security in the face of the invasion. “Telemarathon is a weapon. It’s a united information space. It works for Ukraine and against Russia,” Zelensky says.
Others disagree. The New York Times reported on June 18 that “journalists and groups monitoring press freedoms are raising alarms over what they say are increasing restrictions and pressures on the media in Ukraine under the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky.” As with restriction on political parties, they say that the restrictions on press freedom “go well beyond the country’s wartime needs.”
Wartime government control of the media seems to be less about security and more about “crimping positive coverage of the opposition and suppressing negative coverage of the government and the military.”
Lutsenko, the aforementioned former Minister of Internal Affairs and ex-Prosecutor General of Ukraine, agrees with this assessment, telling Die Welt that “freedom of speech and freedom of the press are very seriously limited.” He says that censorship applies, not only to matters of defense and security, but to “political debates…Many voices are simply not allowed to be heard on television screens.”
Sources interviewed by the Times also spoke of voices not heard, saying they receive lists identifying which officials can be quoted and which are “undesirable.”
In March 2023, a new media law extended the state’s censorship powers to print and online media, and granted the state the authority to review the content of all Ukrainian media, prohibit content it deems a threat to the nation, and issue mandatory directives to media outlets.
David Rundell and Michael Gfoeller in an op-ed that appeared in Newsweek, say that the law gives the council the power “to censor and shut down independent platforms.” Nicolai Petro, professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island and the author of The Tragedy of Ukraine, told me that the council also now has the power to block “any registered media site through an expedited court proceeding.”
“At this point there are no independent television stations broadcasting news in Ukraine,” say Rundell and Gfoeller. “Print and digital media remain heavily censored.” And the situation is not scheduled to improve. Petro says that “In 2024, the National Council’s supervisory functions will expand even further, and they will not expire after the end of the war.” This extension suggests, once again, a purpose beyond wartime security.
Although both the crackdown on opposition parties and on the media are presented as restrictions on pro-Russian elements made necessary by the war, neither seem to have security benefits. Both seem to have the benefit of removing opposition to Zelensky. This realization demands the question, more than the postponement of elections, of whether Zelensky is passing measures to undermine democracy and consolidate power in the disguise of security measures made necessary by the war.
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