{"id":31159,"date":"2026-08-21T10:12:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T10:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/31159\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T10:12:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T10:12:06","slug":"ukrainians-see-a-different-zelensky-one-who-needs-to-be-reformed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/31159\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainians see a different Zelensky \u2013 one who needs to be reformed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr during a welcoming ceremony in front of the Palace of Serbia, in August.ANDREJ ISAKOVIC\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

A word often applied to Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a> by foreign leaders and commentators is \u201cChurchillian.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019re referring, accurately, to the Ukrainian President\u2019s ability to rally his people around acts of heartbreaking sacrifice, to marshal an international coalition to arm and support his country, and to embrace innovative technologies that have transformed the way the world arms itself.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s another meaning of \u201cChurchillian\u201d that\u2019s also applied to Mr. Zelensky, mainly at home.<\/p>\n

Winston Churchill was a disastrously bad domestic leader. In cabinet before the war and as Prime Minister after, he was fiscally and monetarily ruinous, resistant to reform, reactionary, secretive and given to cronyism and hubris. Some of those qualities may have been beneficial wartime traits, but even during those years he was fiercely criticized for his cloistered, aristocratic approach.<\/p>\n

When I\u2019ve asked well-informed Ukrainians whether this second sense of \u201cChurchillian\u201d applies to Mr. Zelensky, they\u2019ve invariably thrown up their hands and given me that very Ukrainian \u201cbut of course\u201d face. That includes, especially in the last year, people within his party.<\/p>\n

This became very public this week, when Mykhailo Fedorov, the young defence minister who had been fired by Mr. Zelensky<\/a> in July, released a nine-minute YouTube video condemning Ukraine\u2019s \u201csystemic crisis of governance\u201d and calling for wartime elections<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Explainer: Can Ukraine hold elections while at war?<\/a><\/p>\n

This has been the second summer in a row in which Ukrainians have taken to the streets against Mr. Zelensky\u2019s actions to protect loyalists. In this case, Mr. Fedorov was a highly popular figure widely credited with introducing high-tech drone warfare and thus bringing the war to Russia and turning its tide. He had been sacked because Mr. Zelensky felt he needed to end a paralyzing feud between him and military commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, an old-guard conventional tactician. To many Ukrainians, it looked like yet another instance in which their President favoured loyalty over competence.<\/p>\n

After days of street protests, Mr. Zelensky responded by also firing Mr. Syrskyi, and putting new people into both offices. It resembled the events of 2025, when Ukraine\u2019s two anti-corruption administrations had exposed a scheme in which businessman Timur Mindich, a friend and former business partner of the President, was accused of laundering about US$100-million in kickbacks paid to Ukraine\u2019s nuclear-power agency; days later, anti-corruption agents raided the home of Andriy Yermak, who as head of the President\u2019s office was Ukraine\u2019s most powerful official, allegedly in connection with the scheme. Mr. Zelensky forced him out in November.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Protesters march during a rally calling for a reform of the defence sector and the reinstatement of defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, on Aug. 16.SERHII OKUNEV\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Mr. Zelensky had signed a law last July that effectively neutered the corruption agencies, subordinating them to cabinet (at the very moment they were wiretapping his friend and his colleague). Only after large-scale mass protests last summer did he restore the independent status of the agencies<\/a>, allowing the investigations to go ahead.<\/p>\n

Mr. Zelensky has never really served as a peacetime leader. When he was elected in 2019, Russia\u2019s invasion and occupation of Crimea and Donbas had been under way for almost five years; nevertheless, he was elected on an anti-corruption and modernization platform. He hadn\u2019t been greatly successful at either, except that, unlike previous Ukrainian presidents, he wasn\u2019t an oligarch, and hasn\u2019t personally been associated with serious corruption. Some of his actions before 2022, and many after, have reversed modernization: Many mayors and premiers are now appointed loyalists rather than elected figures<\/a>; only a single state-controlled TV news broadcast<\/a> is allowed; many officials appear to have been replaced<\/a> with more loyal and unquestioning figures.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important not to mistake this Ukrainian critique of Mr. Zelensky with the ones that come from Moscow and Washington. President Vladimir Putin has long characterized the Ukrainian leader as a \u201cNazi\u201d (while somehow simultaneously portraying him as an agent of \u201cdegenerate\u201d Western homosexuality and gender politics). Donald Trump last year claimed Mr. Zelensky was \u201cusing the war\u201d to avoid elections and that Ukraine is \u201cnot a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Zelensky is decidedly not from the far right; in fact, his election in 2019 provoked the permanent collapse of extreme-right politics. And there are good reasons<\/a> why no Ukrainian leader would have held an election since 2022. Wartime elections are forbidden under Ukraine\u2019s constitution. Polling stations would serve as targets for Russian missiles. The six million Ukrainian refugees abroad would need a way to vote. And preventing Moscow from manipulating the vote, as it has in the past, would be very hard.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely an election will, or could, be held now. But until peace arrives, the two-thirds of Ukrainians<\/a> who want a new postwar leader can take consolation that their protests, and Ukraine\u2019s imperfect system of checks and balances, have been working. <\/p>\n

Unlike in Moscow \u2013 or, increasingly, the United States \u2013 the corruption and cronyism get exposed, and Mr. Zelensky does reverse himself when confronted.<\/p>\n

He needs to be confronted more. Before the war enters a fifth year, Ukrainians deserve a free media, democratic decentralization and mechanisms that ensure competence will be favoured over loyalty, curbing their President\u2019s worst instincts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr during a welcoming ceremony in front of the Palace of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[273,255,274,247,245,275,272,244,262,263,258,246,243,268,270,267,261,253,286,248,249,260,256,257,251,276,252,281,282,284,279,283,277,280,250,265,266,79,264,278,254,269,271,259,85,81,285],"class_list":["post-31159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}