For the first time since its commanding win of the 2019 parliament elections, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party has lost its top place in polls.
According to a February poll by Rating Group, Zelensky’s party is in a dead heat with the pro-Kremlin Opposition Platform – For Life party. Zelensky’s party, with its 245-member majority in parliament, trails slightly at 18.6% compared to 18.9% for the opposition party that has 44 members in parliament.
Another poll showed an even worse result for the Servant of the People. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) put Zelensky’s party in fourth place, behind the parties of Zelensky’s main rival ex-President Petro Poroshenko with his 27-member European Solidarity party and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who leads the 24-member Batkivshchyna party.
Zelensky’s popularity is faring better than his party’s standing, but that is also in decline. According to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Zelensky is the most popular politician with 19.8% of the support. Yet the same poll gives Zelensky’s party only 11.2% of the vote.
The recent ratings don’t come as a surprise. After capitalizing on Zelensky’s unprecedented support rate, the party that consists of clashing interest groups has been plagued by scandals, infighting and internal sabotage.
Its members stalled the work of parliament, sabotaged key reforms, and tried to cause a rift between Ukraine and the West. Others, inexperienced half-baked politicians, made fools of themselves on TV, once advising senior citizens to sell their pets to pay their gas bills.
“People expected a miracle from Zelensky, the miracle didn’t happen,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst. “Zelensky also promised to bring new faces into parliament, yet (the new faces) didn’t deliver.”
However, despite the ongoing scandals, the inability to work together and Zelensky’s overall dissatisfaction with the party, snap elections are unlikely. “Dissolving the parliament now would be a terrible mistake,” Fesenko told the Kyiv Post.
Weak majority
The Servant of the People party was hastily created weeks before the parliamentary election, riding the wave of Zelensky’s presidential election victory.
The party, named after the president’s popular TV show, was meant to smoothly push the president’s agenda through parliament. Since the start, this plan fell short of the expectations. Various interest groups were opposing reformist legislation.
The dissatisfaction with the party mounted, suffering from both the president’s shortcomings and the party’s own futility.
“Voters often direct their criticism towards the party, rather than the president,” says Fesenko. “Zelensky is likable, the party isn’t.”
In July 2019, Zelensky’s party received 54% of seats in parliament.
“You’re all here because of the president,” said Zelensky’s party lawmaker Mykyta Poturaev after meeting his fellow party members for the first time, days before the inaugural parliament session.
Yet the party doesn’t seem to feel loyalty to Zelensky.
Even though the party has a clear majority of 245 lawmakers, it often fails to give the 225 votes necessary to pass a bill to appoint an official, even when they are proposed by the president.
It took the parliament months to pass the critically needed bank law in 2020. The additional votes came from Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party and the pro-Western Voice party.
For the first time since the 2019 parliamentary election, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party has surrendered first place in opinion polls. According to the February Rating Group poll, Zelensky’s party is supported by 18.6% of voters trailing behind the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life party. The January poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology gives Zelensky’s party the fourth result, behind Opposition Platform, ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshcina.
Zelensky’s party also constantly requires help to appoint Cabinet ministers.
Education Minister Serhiy Shkarlet and Health Minister Maksym Stepanov were appointed with the help of the pro-Kremlin Opposition Platform – For Life party. These appointments were criticized by the pro-Western opposition.
Meanwhile, despite Zelensky’s request, the Servant of the People party failed to appoint Yuriy Vitrenko, former top manager of the state-owned Naftogaz energy company, as Ukraine’s new energy minister.
Ukraine has not had an energy minister since March 2020.
Falling pieces
Such a weak showing isn’t surprising. The hastily thrown together party put people with polar opposite ideas and loyalties into one ticket. This backfired.
Since early 2020, a group of lawmakers connected to Kolomoisky began sabotaging presidential bills and appointments, going so far as to topple the government of Oleksiy Honcharuk in March 2020.
Honcharuk supported a tough stance against Kolomoisky. Several vocal members of Zelensky’s party were publicly attacking the prime minister. A recording was leaked where Honcharuk speaks unfavorably of Zelensky. The president sacked the Cabinet soon after that.
Leading the assault was lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky, who worked on a TV network owned by Kolomoisky.
Servant of the People party lawmakers Yevhen Shevchenko (L) and Oleksandr Dubinsky talk during a parliament session in Kyiv, on Jan. 26, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Dubinsky became the symbol of the in-party opposition to Zelensky, and to pro-Western agenda.
The party leadership allowed it for 1.5 years. He was eventually kicked out of the Servant of the People faction in January, following the U.S. imposing sanctions against the lawmaker for interfering in the 2020 presidential elections.
Kolomoisky-aligned lawmakers have also blocked the work of the parliament for several months in 2020, in order to slow down the adoption of the bank law unfavorable to the oligarch.
As a result, during the initial stages of the pandemic, Ukraine had a new government without several key ministers, and an impotent parliament. Again, no sanctions followed for the Servant of the People lawmakers.
Kolomoisky isn’t the only power broker in Zelensky’s party. Political experts say that oligarch Rinat Akmetov, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Speaker Dmytro Razumkov have lawmakers who tend to support their patron’s interests over those of the president.
An investigation by Bihus.Info news outlet found that up to 30 Servant of the People lawmakers appear to be controlled by Akhmetov, based on how they vote.
The group aligned with Kolomoisky is reportedly even bigger.
Razumkov is becoming another big problem for Zelensky and his party. The speaker regularly fails to back Zelensky’s agenda.
Anatoliy Oktysiuk, a political expert at the Democracy House think tank, said that Razumkov is working on his own electoral rating and doesn’t support decisions that can hurt his standing.
Scandals
However, even when it wasn’t so obviously influenced by external power brokers, the party generated scandals that have harmed its image.
The party scandals included the comments of lawmaker Yevhen Brahar who called on retirees to sell their pets to pay for utilities and lawmaker Bohdan Yeremenko photographed in parliament texting a sex worker.
The loudest scandal occurred when journalists of Bihus.Info found out that the Servant of the People lawmaker Mykola Tyshchenko kept his restaurant in Kyiv open during the nationwide lockdown.
According to Fesenko, trivial political scandals or accusations often don’t influence ratings right away. However, they accumulate negativity towards the party.
Pro-Russian revival
With Zelensky’s party drowning under its own weight, pro-Russian forces are seizing momentum.
For the first time since the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution, which led to the ousting of the Kremlinbacked President Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian party is leading the polls.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, occupied eastern Donbas and Crimea, and killed over 13,000 people, it cut the ground out from under pro-Russian parties.
Many voters turned their back on pro-Russian parties, while a substantial number of potential pro-Russian voters were now under occupation, cut off from polling stations.
During the 2014 parliament election, the largest pro-Russian party, Opposition Bloc, received slightly under 10%. Two years prior, the pro-Russian Party of Regions and Ukraine’s Communist Party together gained 43% of the vote and were able to form a government.
After nearly a decade, a Kremlin-friendly party is back on top.
The pro-Russian Opposition Platform was able to gain by spreading Russian propaganda, promising to end the long-lasting war and actively capitalizing on Zelensky’s shortcomings.
Russian propaganda became so explicit that Zelensky, on Feb. 2, signed a decree issuing personal sanctions against pro-Russian lawmaker Taras Kozak and his three nationwide TV channels – NewsOne, Channel 112, and ZIK.
As a result of Zelensky’s decree, the channels have been immediately shut down.
What now?
However, despite the unpopularity of Zelensky’s party, its disagreements with the president and its inability to pass crucial legislation without external help, no shakeup is expected.
“In times of decreasing electoral support, the president should not call on snap elections,” said Fesenko.
According to the February Rating Group poll, President Volodymyr Zelensky is supported by 21.7% of the voters 1.5 years after taking office. After peaking at over 50% after the election, Zelensky’s support rate is dropping each month. However, Zelensky is not alone, his predecessors Petro Poroshenko and Viktor Yushchenko saw their electoral support decline in a similar fashion. The notable exception was ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, whose electoral support remained high until just a few months before being ousted by the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution (polls by Rating Group, KIIS, SOCIS).
Today, the Servant of the People party casts around 170-200 votes for appointments or crucial bills. External help comes from the 24-member Dovira faction in parliament and around 10 independent lawmakers.
The Dovira faction was formed by independent lawmakers in parliament and, according to Ukrainian media, has been linked to Interior Minister Avakov. The Interior Ministry didn’t respond to a request to comment.
“They aren’t in a formal coalition, but their support is stable,” says Fesenko.
If a draft law is crucial for Ukraine’s partnership with the European Union, NATO or the International Monetary Fund pro-western opposition usually supports the bill.
Recently, Zelensky’s office began successfully negotiating with Tymoshenko’s Batkyvshchyna faction.
In late January, photographers in parliament took a photo of Tymoshenko sending text messages to who appeared to be Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak. In the conversation, Tymoshenko invited Yermak over and promised him “documents.”
“(For Zelensky) it’s better to have a problematic majority that can be consolidated than losing the control over parliament completely,” says Fesenko.
