As Americans will head to polling stations on Nov. 3 in one of the most significant vote in decades, Ukraine will be anxiously waiting for the election outcome. Whoever wins – Donald Trump or Joe Biden – will matter greatly to Ukraine, which still looks to America for political, financial and military support.
The presidential election campaign has been a bumpy ride for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Even though Washington has provided substantial support to Kyiv, it has never been clear that Trump supported these policies. Over the past year and a half, Zelensky found himself at the center of major international crises, including the U.S. impeachment investigation and Iran’s downing of a passenger airplane. How Zelensky managed to distance Ukraine from U.S. domestic politics and his political philosophies became the main topics of discussion during the Ukrainian Dialogue series, hosted on Oct. 15 by Manor College, a private associate and bachelor’s degree-granting college in Pennsylvania.
The online aoom event brought together Volodymyr Yelchenko, ambassador of Ukraine in the U.S.; Solomiia Bobrovska, a member of Ukraine’s parliament; and Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner.
The video can be watched here.
Yelchenko kicked off the discussion by summing up Zelensky’s achievements since his May 2019 inauguration, including Ukraine’s continuing pursuit of European Union and NATO membership.
Among them: The 423-seat Verkhovna Rada, with its 246-member majority belonging to Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, finally abolished the immunity of members of parliament. It also passed a law on presidential impeachment and the law allowing limited sales of agricultural land was passed, potentially a major source of new investment.
According to Yelchenko, Ukraine keeps working closely with the International Monetary Fund to meet conditions for low-interest loans. The country has also climbed seven positions in the World Bank’s East of Doing Business rating in 2020, placing 64th among 190 nations. “Zelensky and his people received a clear mandate to tackle – heads on – the threats and the problems the country has been facing: Russian aggression that continues, the corruption that was not eradicated and speeding the reforms that would improve the lives of people,” he said.
However, not everything has been going smoothly.
There’s not much satisfaction in Ukraine on the pace of internal reforms and the situation in the war-torn Donbas remains challenging, with regular casualties and 44,000 square meters — or 7 percent of the country’s territory, including Crimea — remaining in Russia’s hands. Finding a peaceful solution to the conflict and invigorating the work of the Normandy Format remain among top priorities.
“But we are yet to see the same approach from Russia,” the ambassador said. With ongoing support from the US, “no matter who is in the White House, Ukraine will always count on the US support and bipartisan consensus.”
Solomiia Bobrovska from the opposition 20-seat Holos party didn’t share the ambassador’s optimism.
She named a few problems: Zelensky’s lack of experience, speed of lawmaking (when parliament voted in support of drafts with dozens of pages over 5-10 minutes) and “awful HR decisions,” referring to the president’s “spring cleaning” when he removed Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk in a government reshuffle. Bobrovska said the sudden changes to the Cabinet of Ministers after six months didn’t help build trust or allow the country to move faster on reforms.
“Most of the reforms of 2014-2019 were reversed or stalled: judiciary reset was not developed, health reform was canceled,” Bobrovska said in her remarks, adding that Zelensky is using his presidential powers “in a way that resembles late Leonid Brezhnev epoch.” His circle is often accused of corruption and ties to Russian secret services and, according to the lawmaker, the president has not addressed it. As for foreign affairs, she said, Ukraine successfully distanced itself from allegations of meddling in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of losing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. She credited Zelensky’s “wise position” for managing “not to destroy our bilateral relations.”
Bonner agreed that Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been very active in terms of promoting the country’s image and tha tUkrainian diplomacy has been adapting quickly to the new realities caused by COVID-19.
The country has received a chance to show that it can be a reliable contributor to transatlantic security: Ukraine’s Antonov planes, including the world’s largest Mriya transport plane, have been delivering medical equipment from China to NATO member states during the pandemic. However, where big improvement needs to happen is on the domestic front, Bonner said.
“We don’t have judicial reform, anti-corruption institutions are under attack from many directions and we may end up losing the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine,” he said. “There’s been no justice for the corrupt in Ukraine, in fact, there have been more convictions in the US for corrupt Ukrainian politicians than in Ukraine.”
Oligarchs are feeling very comfortable, Bonner said, adding that the prosecutors are not opening cases against people like billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky who helped siphon $5 billion from PrivatBank, a Ukrainian largest bank that he and his partner Gennadiy Boholiubov opened in 1992. “They were feeling comfortable under Poroshenko, they are feeling comfortable under Zelensky,” he said.
As far as the American elections are concerned, the speakers remain certain whoever is elected the next president, the attitude towards Ukraine in the U.S. will likely not change and that bipartisan support will remain. One area that will need more attention from the U.S. administration is how to bring more U.S. investment to Ukraine, Yelchenko said.
Bonner agreed that it’s important to boost the investment. However, a lot has to be done in Ukraine to make investors comfortable and ensure the rule of law in the country. As for the election outcome, he says, most Ukrainians that he has spoken with on the subject privately want Biden to “win in a landslide,” but are afraid to say so publicly to avoid alienating Republicans.
“Biden knows Ukraine: he’s been to the country six times as vice president and knows the good and bad about it, he knows the players,” Bonner said. The previous years have shown little interest of American presidents in Ukraine, since neither Trump nor Barack Obama visited the country as president. Bonner hopes that it will change under the next U.S. president since Ukraine “needs more robust American support in all areas.”
Bobrovska also expressed hope that the US will continue to support Ukraine amid hybrid Russian threats.
