It’s too soon to write Petro Poroshenko’s political obituary, as the outgoing Ukrainian president still enjoys enough support in the country for his party to win seats in the Verkhovna Rada in the parliamentary elections in October.
But his days in the top seat of Ukrainian politics will soon be over. There is little chance of a big political comeback for Poroshenko akin to that of Viktor Yanukovych after the 2004 Orange Revolution: The incumbent president was mauled in the presidential election by the inexperienced newcomer Volodymyr Zelenskiy, suffering the worst defeat in percentage terms in Ukrainian presidential election history. The majority of Ukrainian voters wanted literally anyone but Poroshenko to win in 2019.
It didn’t have to be this way. In May 2014, when Ukrainians were voting for their first post-EuroMaidan Revolution president, they were electing someone to continue charting Ukraine’s historic change of course away from Kremlin political and economic domination.
While Poroshenko was still a representative of Ukraine’s old oligarchic political elite, he was savvy enough during both the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2013–2014 to pick the winning side in the decades-long struggle between the public’s yearning to live in a “normal” (i. e. European, democratic) country, and Ukraine’s post-Soviet oligarchic power system.
Given that there was no realistic post-Maidan candidate for president who wasn’t from the old political elite, Poroshenko looked the best bet. He swept to victory on May 25, 2014 with a convincing first round win, with 57.7 percent of the vote, well ahead of his nearest rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, who got 12.81 percent.
But Poroshenko quickly showed he was incapable of making the transition from oligarchic power player to Western-style liberal democratic leader, and this has doomed him to be a single-term president.
It’s the war, stupid…
Poroshenko’s presidency got off to the worst start possible. He promised on May 26, the day after his election, that there would be a quick end to Russia’s war on Ukraine, absurdly claiming that “the anti-terrorist operation cannot and should not last two or three months. It should and will last hours.”
Ukraine had already gone on the offensive against Russia’s military intervention in the Donbas. Acting-President Oleksandr Turchynov launched the “Anti-Terrorist Operation” on April 7, 2014, with the SBU security service commanding operations in the war zone. At that time, Ukraine’s military had been so hollowed out by previous President Viktor Yanukovych’s defense cuts that the nation of 45 million could barely muster 6,000 combat-ready troops. Volunteer battalions, formed and supported by ordinary citizens quickly, helped fill the gap.
Battling hard, Ukraine by late summer looked to be on the verge of defeating the Russian-led forces. But in late August 2014 the Kremlin sent large numbers of regular troops into Ukraine to deal a series of devastating blows to the Ukrainian military, notably at Ilovaisk in Donetsk Oblast, when hundreds of retreating Ukrainian troops were ambushed and killed by Russian artillery. Russian paratroops, tank units and self-propelled artillery also fought Ukrainian troops away from the Russian-Ukrainian border, making it easier for the Kremlin to sustain the occupied parts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.
By early September 2014 Ukraine was forced into humiliating peace talks in Minsk, Belarus, where Russian President Vladimir Putin at one point threatened to “crush Ukraine’s troops,” according to former French President Francois Hollande, who was present at the talks.
The cease-fire agreed in Minsk broke down within hours, and after Ukraine finally lost control of the ruined Donetsk airport in January 2015, another meeting at Minsk was held. Russia broke the second “ceasefire” agreed there almost immediately, seizing control of the strategic rail hub of Debaltseve in another humiliating defeat for Ukraine.
The front line has since stabilized, but the constant, low-level fighting has now taken over 13,000 lives, and Poroshenko’s failure to stop the war is one of the main reasons he lost in 2019. None of the five eastern oblasts gave Poroshenko more than 11.5 percent in the second round vote on April 21. Luhansk Oblast gave him his lowest result — 8.5 percent.
But it’s economy too…
While Russia’s military intervention is only directly affecting Crimea and two oblasts in the Donbas, Ukrainians in the rest of the country have felt its effect in their pockets. The economic crisis may have been triggered by the revolution and war, but it had been brewing under the corrupt misrule of Yanukovych and his cronies, who looted the economy of billions. Poroshenko was faced with the unenviable task of cleaning up the mess.
But between the time Poroshenko took the helm on May 25, 2014 and the aftermath of the terrible defeat at Debaltseve, Ukraine’s hryvnia currency fell from about Hr 11.72 to Hr 28.46 to the dollar on Feb. 26, 2015.
Overall, the hryvnia lost about 70 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar in these first nine months of Poroshenko’s presidency. The dramatic plunge reflected the overvaluation of the currency under Yanukovych, and the sharp contraction of the Ukrainian economy after the outbreak of the war.
But it also reflected the National Bank of Ukraine’s abandonment of its pegging the hryvnia to the dollar and switch to a free-floating exchange rate — one of the key demands of the International Monetary Fund. Throughout his presidency, Poroshenko was to wrestle with the need to meet the demands of Ukraine’s financial backers for reforms, the political backlash that painful but necessary reforms generated, and his own oligarchic desires not to dismantle the system that had nurtured him.
The cleansing of the banking system by the NBU, and astute fiscal policies pursued by Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine’s Finance Minister from December 2014 to April 2016, stabilized the hryvnia at around Hr 22 to the dollar by March 2015. But the currency continued to weaken for the remainder of Poroshenko’s term, with economic growth sluggish. This was a second big reason for his unpopularity come election time in 2019.
And corruption…
Poroshenko was also dogged by corruption allegations against his close political associates, some of whom were former business partners whom he had appointed to positions of power. Over his term, Ukrainian politics looked to have reverted to business as usual, with one lawmaker who fled the country under the threat of embezzlement charges alleging that he had delivered “suitcases of cash” to the Rada to buy key votes for government.
Poroshenko himself failed to give up control of some of the companies he owned, including his influential 5th Channel television station, and faced personal scandals concerning a lavish holiday in the Maldives in early January 2018 and questions over his financial affairs raised by the Panama Papers leak of financial documents. That leak, and the later Paradise Papers leak, raised suspicions that Poroshenko used a web of offshore companies to minimize his tax obligations.
Worse, the former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleh Hladkovskiy — a long-time close business partner of the president — was linked via his son to a scheme to smuggle military parts from Russia, some faulty and obsolete, which were allegedly sold at inflated prices to Ukrainian defense companies.
That last scandal broke a month before the first round of the presidential election, and dogged Poroshenko all through the final part of his election campaign. While Poroshenko’s poll numbers already indicated defeat before the scandal broke, this last setback may well have effectively eliminated any chance of a rebound in his support.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko speaks in front of the Tomos decree, a church document granting canonical independence, during an Orthodox Christmas service in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv on Jan. 7, 2019. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Better from a distance?
Still, there are several reasons to believe history will judge the Poroshenko presidency less harshly than Ukraine’s voters did on April 21.
While Poroshenko failed to stop the war, he also presided over an astonishing recovery of the Ukrainian armed forces, which five years after the EuroMaidan are much more up to the task of defending the country. During his time as president, Ukraine survived times where the very existence of the state appeared to be under threat.
Poroshenko has also managed to retain the goodwill of Ukraine’s Western friends and backers, to the point that many clearly wanted to see him win another term. Although the Ukrainian economy withered under his rule, in the later part of his term shoots of recovery have started to appear, with increased GDP, steadier and lower inflation, and a more stable currency.
Poroshenko’s term also saw the granting of a visa-free travel regime to the Schengen Area countries in June 2017, and the coming into effect of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement in full force on Sept. 1, 2017.
And Poroshenko was instrumental in securing the granting of a Tomos, or deed of autocephaly, to the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church in December 2018, undoing three centuries of ecclesiastical domination of the church in Ukraine by the Moscow Patriarchate — a major historical event.
These achievements might put a shine on the Poroshenko presidency from a distance in time — one that is not apparent at present, close up.
It is to be hoped that Poroshenko is the last “oligarch” president of Ukraine, and that Ukraine’s next president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, can fulfill the public wish for change that has propelled him so spectacularly into office.
But going by the evidence of Poroshenko’s long political career, which has seen him dodge and weave around setbacks to rise to the highest posts in the country, it would also not be wise to count him out yet.
