Zelensky disappoints public in 2020 and loses control - Dec. 24, 2020

In a difficult year, President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government failed to deliver reforms, undermining confidence in Ukraine’s leadership.

Thus, a December poll showing Zelensky as the “political disappointment” of 2020 came as no surprise. The survey was conducted by the Democratic Initiatives.

Government reshuffle

In January, an audiotape of then Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk discussing Zelensky in slightly derogatory terms was leaked publicly.

By March, Honcharuk, much of his Cabinet of Ministers and Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka were sacked. Honcharuk and Riaboshapka were fired for allegedly failing to demonstrate quick results.

Both promptly turned into critics of Zelensky.

Honcharuk was succeeded by Denys Shmyhal, a former top manager for billionaire oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s energy companies. Riaboshapka was replaced by Iryna Venediktova, a former member of parliament with Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.

In February, Zelensky chief of staff Andriy Bohdan was replaced by Andriy Yermak, a friend of Zelensky. Like others fired, Bohdan also publicly turned against Zelensky.

In July, National Bank of Ukraine governor Yakiv Smolii resigned, complaining of pressure from the presidential administration.

It was hard to keep track of all the changes. In March, when Ukraine recorded its first COVID-19 deaths, the country had three health ministers within one month.

Scandals in close circle

The year also tested Zelensky’s promise to not protect his allies if they prove corrupt.

In March, Yermak and his brother Denys were accused of selling government posts by Geo Leros, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.

Leros published videos in which it appeared that Denys Yermak was selling government posts for money. The Yermak brothers denied wrongdoing, while Leros was ousted from the president’s party.

Zelensky defended his chief of staff.

In August, Zelensky appointed Oleh Tatarov as deputy chief of staff despite the fact that, as a police official in 2014, Tatarov justified police violence against protesters of the EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych.

Later in the year, Tatarov turned out to be a suspect in an embezzlement investigation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, prompting him to publicly attack the agency. His case brought no reaction from Zelensky.

Vitaly Shabunin, head of the AntiCorruption Action Center’s executive board, says that he doesn’t understand why Zelensky didn’t fire Tatarov after he learned of the investigation. Zelensky “not only didn’t do what he promised, he began doing the same awful things for which he criticized his predecessor,” says Shabunin.

Also, two lawmakers from Zelensky’s faction — Oleksandr Yurchenko and Pavlo Khalimon — were accused of corruption in 2020. Neither has been prosecuted so far.

Venediktova was accused of blocking the charges against them, which she denied.

Prosecutor general

Venediktova, appointed in March, became one of the most criticized top officials of 2020.

In June, the Prosecutor General’s Office charged Poroshenko with abusing his power by appointing an official in violation of procedure.

By contrast, Venediktova brought almost no charges against top businesspeople and current officials implicated in major corruption. For instance, Venediktova refused to sign an extradition order for Oleh Bakhmatyuk, accused of stealing the stabilizing loan that his bank got from the National Bank of Ukraine.

In August, prosecutors also closed the investigation of the Rotterdam+ pricing formula which benefited oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s energy company DTEK. It was later reopened.

“If (Zelensky’s office) is satisfied with Venediktova’s work, it means that they are comfortable with the fact that their prosecutor general is protecting corrupt officials from punishment,” says Shabunin.

Venediktova disagrees with her critics. In 2020, she published two op-eds in the Kyiv Post, where she describes what she sees as a productive year.

Going after Sytnyk

Simultaneously, pressure mounted on Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption of Bureau of Ukraine, whose independence was praised by anti-corruption watchdogs.

In 2020, pro-Russian politicians, Zelensky’s lawmakers, government officials and courts all joined a campaign to take down Sytnyk. Many of the attackers are subjects of NABU investigations.

The campaign culminated in August, when the Constitutional Court ruled that Sytnyk’s appointment was unconstitutional. In October, Kyiv’s Administrative District Court ruled that Sytnyk must be immediately fired. He stayed.

Later in the year it appeared that NABU and Sytnyk made peace with Zelensky’s administration. But then the president’s deputy chief of staff Tatarov went against NABU for investigating him, and Zelensky allowed it.

Year in parliament

The year also saw the downslide of the 246-member Servant of the People faction which was unable to pass any piece of legislation that threatened vested interests, proving that oligarchs influence a large part of the faction.

Moreover, the party’s lawmakers actively sabotaged bills backed by the president, showing that he was losing control of his lawmakers.

Early in the year, the parliament spent two months on a single bill: Lifting on the longstanding land moratorium allowing farmers to buy and sell land for agricultural needs.

The same happened with the so-called “Kolomoisky law” which harmed Kolomoisky’s chances of returning PrivatBank. The law was required by the International Monetary Fund to continue its lending program.

Lawmakers from Zelensky’s party associated with Kolomoisky tried to block the bill’s passing, filing 16,000 amendments to it. The parliament was forced to change its procedures to pass the law.

Another parliamentary scandal came in August, the U.S. intelligence accused Ukrainian independent lawmaker Andrii Derkach of being Russia’s agent and attempting to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Constitutional crisis

A new round of political gridlock began in October when the Constitutional Court nearly killed Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure.

It started on Oct. 27, when the Constitutional Court effectively destroyed Ukraine’s asset declaration system, a key part of the anti-corruption infrastructure. Several of the judges were investigated based on their declarations.

The Court has also deprived the National Agency for Preventing Corruption (NAPC) of most of its powers. As a result of the court’s decision, more than 100 corruption cases were closed.

Zelensky moved fast and suggested a bill that would fire all 15 judges of the Constitutional Court and roll back the detrimental ruling.

However, the bill went nowhere.

In December, the parliament reinstated the powers of the NAPC and brought back the online declaration system with substantially reduced fines for lying in an official’s declaration. There is no retrospective effect, meaning that all the existing investigations of officials suspected of hiding their assets are void.

As of the end of the year, the crisis remains unresolved. The Court is still a threat: It is considering canceling Ukraine’s land market and killing the Deposit Guarantee Fund. If they succeed, it can put Ukraine on the brink of default.

Electoral defeat

The batched response to COVID-19, political scandals and lack of concrete progress in any direction cost Zelensky’s party at the ballot. His Servant of the People party couldn’t win any major city in the Oct. 25 local elections.

The party had won the most seats in regional councils yet came only third in Ukraine’s biggest cities — Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipro. In Lviv, the party didn’t get into the city council at all.

The weak showing was anticipated. Zelensky had picked up fights with popular mayors since he took office in 2019, and couldn’t recruit strong candidates to take them down at the ballot.

As a result, all the mayors that have been opposing the president were re-elected in October.