Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. © AFP / GENYA SAVILOV
Kyiv Post: Survey: Most Ukrainians disapprove of Zelensky’s actions
Only 28.2% of Ukrainians approve of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s performance, according to a new study published on Nov. 2 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
About one third of respondents say that Zelensky met their expectations in whole (31.1%) or in part (4.3%). Almost half of the respondents answered that he did not meet their expectations. Another 14.2% say they never had any hopes for Zelensky.
Compared to a similar poll in July 2021, the figures have hardly changed. At the time, Zelensky had the approval of 29.3% of respondents and the disapproval of 56.1%.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: Zelensky was overwhelmingly elected President on the promise to make peace with the eastern part of the country, and he was going to do so by accepting long-standing rebel demands for autonomy and control over culture and language.
His election win gave him a clear mandate, but this promise was quickly broken. I cannot put into words the disappointment that I heard from my family and friends who supported Zelenskiy, and who in the end were betrayed by him.
Not surprising. He and his party have not recovered from this broken promise.
Add the Ukraine government's disastrous response to the pandemic that is now ravaging the country in a new wave, coupled with continued corruption and economic stagnation, it has all but destroyed the 70% to 80% popularity numbers that he enjoyed when he was elected.
His party's shellacking in local elections last year (link here) should have been a wake-up call for him. But instead of learning what the voters wanted, President Zelensky has doubled down, pushing for a military solution to end the war in the east.
Zelensky's government is now even trying to get Europe involved with threats of war and invasion from Russia .... Ukraine warns situation on Russian border ‘seriously deteriorating’ (Politico). Even Russian media has picked up on this, and this is what the Kremlin is reading .... Ukraine tells EU leaders: Prepare for war with Russia (RT).
But it is on the domestic front that President Zelensky has become more authoritarian and uncompromising to his opponents. Ukraine’s English-language paper the Kyiv Post and critic of the President was told to suspend publication last week, followed by the firing of all its journalists. This was quickly followed by the Ukrainian government's decree that the country's three Russian-language TV stations (ZiK, NewsOne, and 112 Ukraine) be shut down, followed with the order to shut down the popular Russian-language news website Strana.ua. But this has been temporary, It is now at a different web address (strana.news).
Ukraine is a country where Russian is spoken by a majority of its people. A third of the country see themselves as Russian-Ukrainians. These anti-Russian policies are inflaming ethnic tensions in most of the country, especially in the Russian dominated eastern part of the country.
The next Ukraine Presidential election is in March, 2024. There are already politicians who are positioning themselves to run on the same platform that got Zelensky elected with 73% of the vote in 2019. I wish them the best. But a lot can happen between now and then.
9 comments:
"Zelensky's government is now even trying to get Europe involved with threats of war and invasion from Russia ...."
Zelensky could allege anything. The US has satellites and assets in the ground to verify the allegations. So he is he lying"? Is the US in on it? I would not believe the US is in on it except for the fake Steele Dossier, Much of the establishment was in on it.
True. I'd like to think the US leadership class doesn't want to go to war. Unfortunately it seems many in the leadership class are actually crazy enough to strive for this. Former president Trump wisely acted to defuse tensions. It worked for a time because the Russian leadership feared and respected him combined with the fact that they really don't want to go to war.
EU leadership doesn't want to go to war. Russian leadership doesn't really want to go to war and will only do so if they feel they have no viable option. Given the behavior of the US leadership class, they have stepped up preparations. As Sun Tzu taught, know your enemy, know yourself, and you prevail every time. Know neither yourself nor your enemy and you lose all the time.
The Ukrainian chumps add nothing of value combined with enormous costs and huge downside risks. Time to jettison them. If a shooting war with Russia happens, expect no help from EU nations and expect Former Soviet and eastern bloc nations to sell us out.
Those leaders are as bad at governing as you are at trolling.
Death to the Chekist Putin!
Hey, where did my post go? Surely the WNU editor didn't delete the post?
They must have some kind of Epstein-like dirt on him to have gotten him to bend the knee to the NATO gremlins so quickly.
This post gives a good example of why I'm suspicious of WNU editor's comments on Ukraine. It's very clear his sympathies are with the ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and I feel this bias informs his reporting on Ukraine.
So we start with that Zelensky's popularity is low. No problem. That is what the poll says. We're then told that this is because Zelensky has not ended the war in the Donbas. But we're given no reason to think this is true other than the editor's biased opinion. I read the poll he linked to - we're not given the reasons why respondents are dissatisfied. Is it because of the war? Or is it due to handling of Covid? With a lack of progress on the corruption front? Is it economic issues? A combination? Something else? All are equally plausible. But our editor's commentary does not address the possibility.
He just states it's because Zelensky has not ended the war, which is code for surrendering to Putin. If Putin stopped supporting the separatists, the war in the Donbas would be over within weeks, maybe days. Ukraine isn't able to defeat the separatists because Putin would intervene and send more forces to invade - which is what Putin did in August 2014. So the only reason the war continues is because Russia enjoys escalation dominance. Ending the war means coming to agreement with Putin. There's only two possibilities here - either Putin decides to cut losses and allow Ukraine to restore its sovereignty, or Ukraine agrees to Putin's terms which would make Ukraine ungovernable and allow Putin to degrade Uraine's sovereignty. Zelensky won't agree to this, and Putin isn't ready to give up yet In our editor's mind, this constitutes "betrayal". While that may be the feelings for some of the ethnic Russian Ukrainians who voted for him (like our editor's family), does that hold for his other supporters? Unlikely.
In the same Kyiv Post article he posts, I found an advertised link to an earlier May 2020 article that Zelensky's approval rating was 68%. So what happened between then and the October 2020 elections and now? Is it really that Zelensky won't surrender to Putin? Or is it some other issue? If we go back to that May 2020 article with Zelensky at 68%, we're told even then that he had high unfavorable ratings on the issues of decreasing Oligarch influence, land reform, and corruption. All perennial issues for Ukrainian politics. No government has ever reformed fast enough for Ukrainian citizens. Isn't it more likely that it is these issues - not the failure to end the Donbas conflict - that lies at this recent drop in popularity? I would say so, but admit I do not have the evidence either. It's from my gut. But we don't even get a discussion about this from the WNU editor.
I find the rest of his analysis on world events to be excellent. I even find his analysis in Russia to be good. But I think his sympathies with with his relations in Ukraine creates a consistent bias when reporting on events there. It's useful, but only when paired against other sources. For readers of this blog, I would recommend Brian Whitmore's Power Vertical podcast which primarily talks about Russia but often includes Ukraine. It has its own bias of course, but since it is the opposite of the WNU editor it provides a good corrective. If Whitmore sometimes excludes the opinion of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, he brings up other sides and issues WNU often neglects.
Chris
I should also note there is a difference between Russian speaking Ukrainians - which include ethnic Ukrainians - and ethnic Russian Ukrainians. And while it may be true that "Russian is spoken by the majority of its people", that does not mean a majority of Ukrainians speak Russian primarily or as their native tongue. A 2017 polls I've seen said something like 68% of Ukrainians now list Ukrainian as their native language, 17% list both languages, and only 14% say Russian is their native language. That's a very different perspective than one may get by only hearing that "Russian speakers" are the "majority". It's undeniable that the Russian language is heavily used (even by native Ukrainian speakers) and even dominant in certain media, but there's lots of caveats.
Chris
Totally agree Chris.
My comment got deleted, it was similar to yours, but not as eloquent.
Hope your comment get to stay!
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