A year after President Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidency in the 2019 election, Ukrainian television channels have aired a 50-minute documentary about his first 11 months in office. The film was created by Zelensky’s office and broadly praises the president, while offering zero criticism of his tenure so far.
Titled “A Year of President Zelensky,” the documentary aired on April 22 on popular Ukrainian television channels owned by three oligarchs: Rinat Akhmetov, Viktor Pinchuk and Ihor Kolomoisky.
The documentary highlights three prisoner exchanges carried out between Ukraine and Russia or Russian-led proxies and the lifting of the land moratorium as Zelensky’s main achievements in office.
“All foreign leaders are supporting me,” Zelensky says in the video. He also sends an optimistic message to Ukrainians: The war with Russia will end, corruption will be defeated, and roads will be built.
On land market, bank law and the IMF
The president began his monologue by praising his Servant of the People party for lifting parliamentary immunity in August and lifting the moratorium on farmland sales in March.
“One hundred and eighty laws in eight months in office, who else has done that?” Zelensky said. Now the president is waiting for his party to pass the so-called bank law, which would ban the return of nationalized banks to their previous owners. It would also pave the way for Ukraine to receive an $8-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
However, not everyone is as optimistic as Zelensky about his Servant of the People party, which has 22 votes more than needed for a majority.
The problem is that the law has been stalled in parliament by lawmakers from Servant of the People, who introduced over 16,000 amendments to the bill. The avalanche of amendments forced the ruling party to adopt a special procedure allowing lawmakers to consider the amendments in bulk to speed up the process.
The law on lifting the land moratorium had 4,018 amendments and took 52 days to be voted into law. The law was also severely trimmed from its initial version to appease those stalling the legislation.
It passed with the help of the opposition, who covered for the lack of votes in the ruling party.
On peace
According to Zelensky, he is on his way to fulfilling his main campaign promise: stopping the war. Russia launched its war against Ukraine in 2014, occupying Crimea and invading Donbas. Since then, over 13,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict.
Zelensky correctly notes that he was able to unfreeze the prisoner exchange process with Russia; revive the Normandy Format negotiations between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany; and build a bridge connecting occupied parts of Luhansk Oblast, located 650 kilometers east of Kyiv, with Ukrainian government-controlled territory.
Prior to Zelensky’s inauguration, the last Normandy Format meeting had taken place in late 2016, while the last prisoner exchange was held in December 2017.
However, even lawmakers from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party disagree with Zelensky’s policy toward Russia.
Forty-five lawmakers from the party criticized the president’s office for deciding to create a so-called advisory council that would include representatives of both Ukraine and the Russian-led militants occupying parts of the eastern Donbas region.
Read More: Zelensky’s party divided amid allegations of compromise with Russia
Many saw the decision as tantamount to legally recognizing the militants as an independent entity.
Additionally, 19 lawmakers signed a letter demanding the firing of Serhiy Sivokho, a controversial advisor to Oleksiy Danilov, head of the National Security and Defence Council.
Sivokho, a former comedian who worked with Zelensky on comedy shows before 2019, was placed in charge of developing a program of reconciliation between the occupied territories of Donbas and the rest of Ukraine.
Two of the three prisoner exchanges also faced criticism. The first involved Ukraine giving up Volodymyr Tsemakh, a Ukrainian citizen who fought for the Russia-led militants. He was a potential witness to Russia’s downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 near Donetsk in July 2014.
All 298 people on board were killed. The trial in absentia of suspects in the downing began on March 9 in the Hague.
The second prisoner exchange involved Ukraine releasing five former police officers of the now disbanded Berkut unit, who had been charged with allegedly murdering protesters during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
About 100 demonstrators were killed during the revolution, which ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. Berkut officers stand accused of the worst violence against demonstrators.
Both of these exchanges brought Ukrainian prisoners home, but also potentially ensured that alleged murders would never see justice.
“I would give 50, 100 Berkut officers for one Ukrainian soldier,” Zelensky said in the documentary.
On courts
A large portion of the president’s documentary focused on the lack of efficiency among Ukrainian law enforcements and courts.
The documentary showed news clips that reported on multiple high-profile government officials being arrested for corruption. Among them were lawmakers Serhiy Pashynsky and Yaroslav Dubnevych and the former deputy head of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleh Hladkovsky.
In the news clips, the anchors also informed their audience that the property of former President Petro Poroshenko was searched in connection with a corruption case, giving the impression the officials from the highest echelons of the Ukrainian state were prosecuted under Zelensky.
In fact, besides Hladkovsky, all the officials in question were released from custody and none of them have been convicted on any charges.
Zelensky says it’s all because the courts are bad. “Through all those years, the (judicial) system was built in a way that it doesn’t work fairly” he said.
“We wanted to relaunch the judiciary,” Zelensky added.
Zelensky introduced a judicial reform law with the ostensible aim of firing tainted judges and creating credible judicial institutions. Parliament passed it in October and he signed it in November. However, two commissions tasked with cleansing the judiciary were not created by the deadlines set under the law.
Civic activists have urged Zelensky to submit a bill to resolve the situation and re-launch the reform, but this has not happened.
On law enforcements
According to Zelensky, Ukraine has too many law enforcement agencies and this also impedes corruption investigations. Most of these agencies were created with financial support from European and American donors.
“They were made to dodge responsibility,” Zelensky said, adding that he is planning to relaunch all law enforcement agencies and decrease their numbers.
“I want to have three people sitting in front of me with concrete responsibilities,” the president said.
According to civic watchdog organizations, the agencies that are in need of reform are Ukraine’s interior ministry and the SBU security service. The former is headed by Arsen Avakov, who has led the ministry for six years. In March, Zelensky called Avakov the most effective minister — despite the fact that he and his associates have faced serious corruption accusations. The SBU is led by Ivan Bakanov, the president’s childhood friend.
The president also said that he doesn’t intervene in the work of law enforcement and has little influence over these agencies.
“The influence of the president’s office in the sense that (I tell law enforcement) this person should be imprisoned, but don’t touch this person — that influence doesn’t exist,” Zelensky said. At the same time, he said that he regularly gathers the heads of law enforcement agencies and demands results.
Zelensky also notably said that he influenced the country’s change of government in early March, intervening to determine which of the ministers should be fired. That directly violates the law, which states that the Cabinet is only subordinate to the parliament.
On medical reform during the pandemic
In the documentary, Zelensky blamed Ukraine’s stalled medical reform for the country’s weak initial response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over 180,000 people worldwide and 174 in Ukraine as of April 22.
The medical reform was initiated by former acting Health Minister Ulana Suprun, but has not been completed.
“Coronavirus showed us what this medical reform really is. Hospitals aren’t ready,” said Zelensky. “We didn’t even have 1,000 working lung ventilators in a nation of 40 million people.”
“It’s a disgrace,” the president added.
Zelensky said that after the COVID-19 pandemic ends, Ukraine will have to completely rethink the medical reform. According to the president, it has destroyed Ukraine’s health care system.
“Except for professional, wonderful medical workers, we don’t have anything else – that’s the whole medical reform” Zelensky said.
