President Zelensky’s First 100 Days

On August 27th, Volodymyr Zelensky marks 100 days at the post of president. It is believed that from this moment the electorate can draw the first intermediate conclusions about the activities of a new president in power. At the inauguration ceremony, Zelensky announced large-scale reforms. So, what has already been done, and what promises have not been done, and what promises have not been fulfilled yet?

To talk more about President Zelensky’s first 100 days in office, we are joined by Dmitry Vasilyev, the political expert.

– I would like to know first, what are your impressions of Zelensky’s first 100 days at the president’s post.

– Talking about general impressions I think that in his role, he’s much better than a lot of people expected, including myself. I think I was tracked with his speech during 24 August official ceremony of Independence day. I think it was very much articulate about Ukrainian interests. The only thing I was liking in this speech was the EU and NATO integration. That’s something what I really wanted to hear. But all along I think he is becoming a president and I think he is much more clear about what he want’s to do as many could imagine about before he became the president.

– During his election campaign, he was far from being clear, so that’s why now is a surprise.

– I actually wanted to say that he wasn’t promising too much and nobody exactly knew what kind of promises he’s done during the presidential campaign and what he’s got to achieve, and what else I expect from him to achieve. I think most of the things which we heard or expected was something that we heard from speakers and people of Zelensky’s team. As they say ZeTeam. That’s why it is difficult to say what we have to expect from them or from the president. We can exactly say what he is doing and what he has done.

– Still, there were some promises about depriving MP’s of the immunity, also these draft laws of impeachment, so there were some promises about legislation development.

– This is something from Mr. Stefanchuk from the Parliament and he is expected to be the first deputy speaker of the Parliament. This is something we heard from Dmitry Razumkov who was expected to be the speaker of the Parliament, but we never heard that from Volodymyr Zelensky.

– Not from him, yes. That’s true but from his representatives, that’s why probably we had this kind of impression that those were his promises.

– Well, I think that Volodymyr Zelensky as a presidential candidate was a general image created by people of Ukraine, with one hand of opposition to the former president Poroshenko because there were a lot of critics towards him and sometimes not really correct critics since there were so many political opponents, including ZeTeam as we were saying.

There was a lot of expectations what Zelensky could do when he will come to power. For example, reduction of tariffs for public services, improvement of the economic situation, stopping the war, etc. But that was the expectations of people, what they would like to see in new President, and what particularly Volodymyr Zelensky will do. But he didn’t mention too much what he is planning to do and what he is promising to do.

– Well, let’s not talk about his promises and talk about his actions. If people expected him to reduce tariffs and this is a number one point from the survey done by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology from June 25 to July 7th about people expectations of the president within the first 100 days. So this point about the reduction of utility tariffs has gained the maximum votes, 42.8 percent of responders want tariffs to be lower. Has anything been done?

– In this tariffs, a lot of things, which are going around for the price of energy products and energy resources. For example, coil. One of the most prominent critics we heard that were cited, were critics about Rotterdam Plus, it’s kind of a formula for the price for coal and consequently the price for public services, including electricity.

– There is an investigation into that.

– There is an investigation into that, a couple of people are actually put into prison, waiting for court, and the decision of the court. But it was really funny that about one and a half weeks ago the President collected the most experienced people in the energy industry and they had a serious talk about the price for the coal. On one side they realized that the price of the coal with Rotterdam Plus was the cheapest among all those proposals which we had from the market.

– Basically, that’s was the best option for Ukraine

– At this moment that was the best price basically, it was 17.42 hryvnia. So in these terms, there was a question mark what was that talk about and why they have decided to put prison people who had signed some documents for Rotterdam Plus. So that is still something that has to be investigated and I think a lot of questions are already set and they must be answered.

– Although I have some question marks about the statements that Ukraine meets to negotiate some new obligations with the IMF and lower the tariffs. And basically for what I remember I mean some kind of time frame for these talks in September. Do you think this can actually happen because Ukraine was the one who created this kind of obligation before the IMF to increase tariffs and now Ukraine was to initiate to lower them?

– Well, I cannot support the idea that Ukraine suggested to the IMF to increase the tariffs. I think it was some sort of obligation before the IMF because it was very important for the IMF decision to give tranche of IMF money to Ukraine. The most important thing that was about the balance of our state budget. And basically, it was very important to make sure that we have as less as the possible deficit of the budget. And one of the thing to avoid deficit is basically to have a level of tariffs on reasonable market price which depends on the cost of the services itself. That’s why there was a kind of talks around the IMF obligations but, in fact, that was pretty reasonable requirements from those who are given the lone to make sure that we have enough money in our budget to pay our bills.

– Of course. I think that it may be an obvious requirement but not the direct basically the IMF needs some kind of insurances that Ukraine will payback. But there was from our side to increase the tariffs. So do you believe that these talks might actually happen and that the obligations that Ukraine took can be changed?

– No, because, you know the most important for the IMF to make sure that Ukraine has enough money in its budget to pay our checks and bills from the IMF after those tranches will be received. Because there are a lot of credits as a matter of fact. I think the main obligation will be the downed budget deficit as less as possible and will be even minimized. That’s why there is no other chance for Ukraine, for Ukrainian decision-makers to keep our tariffs on a market economic level which is reasonable and enough to pay back our bills. That’s first.

And second, I think there will be actually negotiating much more with the companies to produce energy and communal services for people try to see what kind of improvements they can do in order to make their bills less than they are right now. So, I think there will be much more negotiations of the government of Ukraine with the communal companies.

– Yes, there are some energy-saving services being launched last year. I think there are some energy-efficiency programs. They are not enough, for sure.

– But in fact, as a matter of fact, I think Ukraine went through very huge progress over the last 28 years because in 1991 when we just gained our Independence, we consumed 113 bln cubic meters of the gas. It’s a huge figure which difficult to imagine. Right now our consumption is about 30-31 bln.cub.m of the gas. So it is much better and I think we’re still on the way for better improvement. And I think Ukraine doesn’t need more than, let’s say, 15 or 20 bln.cub.m of gas. For example, our neighboring Poland which is quite a developed country, very developed country economically, socially, etc., they consume only 15 bln.cub.m of gas. There is a lot of room for improvements.

– Yes, there is a lot of room for improvement. That’s for sure. We cannot just stop on the tariffs and gas topic. Let’s expand a little more on the 100 Days of Zelensky’s presidency. So what victories would you outline?

– Well, the main victory is that he dissolved the Parliament. And Constitutional court didn’t actually stop this process. So Constitutional court accepted that it might be possible. So I think that was victory number 1 that the Constitutional court decided that it was possible to do during elections of our Parliament. And second, of course, they’ve got the majority in the Parliament, 254 people. This is a majority and they don’t need to create [coalition]. It was for the first time in Ukrainian history. The same is for the first in the Ukrainian history President got 73 percent of votes for his presidency.

So they actually have very great credit from the Ukrainian nation for president and his political party Servant of People. And, of course, it will be their choice and their right to form the government. And, of course, this is a huge victory. So, basically, they got president, got the majority in the Parliament. And right now, straight after the first gathering of the Parliament on the 29th of August, they will have their government. This is a kind of monopolization of power in a good sense.

– Let’s hope that in a good sense.

– In a good sense, this means actually according to the Constitution and all political rights. That was a democratic process and the Ukrainian nation has decided like that. Of course, most of the experts, and political parties and political figures do not like it, including me, but you know we’ve got what we’ve got and let’s see what it will bring to Ukraine and in our region.

– I want to outline the reaction from Ukraine’s first president Leonid Kravchuk. He was very clear that Zelensky has been working in extreme conditions. Well, he said that practically Zelensky was the only one working since he could not replace officials to head government agencies. Zelensky has been working for almost 100 days without the Verkhovna Rada, the government, and even those officials, whose he as entitled to appoint according to the Constitution. I believe, that these are extreme conditions. What do you think about that?

– I respect our first President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk because he helped Ukraine to gain our independence. But I definitively do not agree with his point of view on this matter. He is giving an excuse to Zelensky, that he did do too much. That was the destiny of most of the presidents of Ukraine, when they go the Presidency, especially when there was the Parliamentary-Presidential Republic. They did not have too many possibilities to do their job because of the Parliament and because of all those political processes which we have in Ukraine.

That’s why that was not a problem of Zelensky, but most of them, I mean, that the President who was before Zelensky. As a matter of fact, one of the jobs which we were trying to do and would be done – we were trying to dissolve the Parliament. And that was done by Zelensky. He did it successfully and this is good. And now everything is in his hands and his political party and his, as a matter of fact, in his government. So, let’s see what he will do.

– Let’s see and actually on August 29th – is the first date of the 9th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada. What to expect?

– First of all, we will form the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada, we will have Speaker, first Deputy Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada. Second, I think they will propose to vote for Prime Minister and Cabinet of Ministers. Third, they will propose to vote for the reduction of the number of MPs in the Ukrainian Parliament. And forth, they will try to vote for some legislation on deimmunization of the People’s deputies — MPs of Ukrainian Parliament.

What it will be we will see. I think these are a kind of natural ideas what we can have about the first day of the Parliament. According to all the statements we had from Dmytro Razumkov, Ruslan Stefanchyuk, who are kind of leaders or the future leaders of the Presidium of the Parliament and as a matter of fact from the President of Ukraine.

– Do you think that the next convocation of Verkhovna Rada want entering in history as the one that deprived the MPs of the Parliamentary immunity and they will be ready to take this step?

– I hope, they will not do a big mistake to deprive to the point zero the MPs immunity, because in our country and in our kind of stage of development of our democracy, it is necessary to have, at least, some sort of immunity of MPs to ensure the possibility to have political activity and activeness. Because if there is no immunity at all, there will be many easy possibilities to kind of hook Ukrainian Parliament and MPs by the law. And it will be very easy to do with our sort of juridical system. That’s why I hope, that when we’ll do some kind of redaction of the immunity, but not deprivation at all.