adam zivo: zelenskyy is not a dictator
trump's smears are unfounded
4 minute read
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u.s. president donald trump and his political allies have recently taken to smearing ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy as a “dictator,” which is absurd. zelenskyy’s governance over ukraine has been in line with wartime democratic norms, and attempts to claim otherwise are based on distortions and falsehoods.
according to the maga movement, zelenskyy is authoritarian because he has declined to hold new elections while banning certain opposition parties and media outlets. what these critics conveniently omit, though, is that these decisions were motivated by legitimate wartime security concerns and have received broad support from ukrainian voters.
though presidential elections were due last spring, ukraine’s constitution explicitly forbids elections from being held while martial law is in effect. zelenskyy has, in this respect, only obeyed the rules. there is nothing exceptional about this: the united kingdom suspended elections during the second world war, yet no reasonable person would call winston churchill a dictator.
it is self-evident that fully fair and secure elections cannot be held amid total war, when any city can be bombed without warning. congregating civilians at polling stations with limited shelter capacity could set the stage for mass casualty events — which is a reality that russia could easily exploit to its strategic advantage. furthermore, potential and actual attacks could disrupt oversight of ballots and voter lists, undermining the integrity of subsequent results.
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complicating things further, ukraine has no system for mail-in voting and requires that ballots be cast in person. not only would this create security risks for soldiers who wish to vote, it would also mean that millions of ukrainian refugees living abroad would have to travel, sometimes for hundreds of kilometres, to cast their ballots at local embassies and consulates which, reportedly, do not even have the capacity to handle a project of this scale.
ironically, these factors mean that russian-speakers from ukraine’s east and south — the very population that moscow supposedly wants to “liberate” — would face disproportionate barriers to voting. not only have many of the ukrainians in these regions been displaced, those who stayed in their homes now find themselves living in cities and villages that are closer to the frontlines, where the risk of being bombed is particularly acute.
in light of these realities, it shouldn’t be surprising that an october 2023 poll by the international republican institute found that 62 per cent of ukrainians believed that elections should only be held after the war is over. while more recent data is unavailable, these findings are consistent with what journalists and volunteers working in ukraine, like myself, have been anecdotally hearing on the ground.
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despite ample evidence to the contrary, trump has asserted, without evidence, that zelenskyy only has a four per cent approval rating and that the ukrainian president is suspending elections only because he wants to cling onto power. however, according to both ukrainian and american pollsters, zelenskyy’s approval rating is actually hovering at around 60 per cent right now, which is, incidentally, higher than trump’s.
polling data has consistently shown that zelenskyy’s popularity exploded after russia’s full-scale invasion and has, since then, eroded over time. for example, the kyiv international institute of sociology found that 52 per cent of its polling respondents distrusted zelenskyy just before the invasion, only for that number to collapse to seven per cent in may 2022 before creeping back up to 39 per cent in december 2024.
so if zelenskyy were truly the despot his critics believe him to be, his rational choice would be to hold an election as soon as possible, in defiance of ukraine’s constitution, so that he might consolidate his power before his popularity further declines.
this has not happened. in fact, zelenskyy publicly announced last weekend that he would be willing to step down as president in exchange for lasting peace or nato membership for ukraine. resigning for the good of one’s nation is not exactly something that dictators do.
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and what of maga’s claims about zelenskyy banning media and political opponents? they are similarly misleading.
russia spent years cultivating a network of pro-kremlin political parties and media outlets in ukraine with the help of viktor medvedchuk, a traitorous ukrainian oligarch. medvedchuk was given a lucrative stake in a russian oil refinery in 2014, which subsequently generated tens of millions of dollars in dividends that he plowed back into pro-russian influence projects.
in 2022, zelenskyy banned several overtly pro-russian political parties and media outlets that had concerning ties to the kremlin — most of which were connected to medvedchuk in one manner or another. the ban included one major opposition party, which received only 13.7 per cent of the vote in 2019, along with 10 fringe parties — the three other main opposition parties were left untouched. this move was apparently popular, as ukrainian polling data from early 2023 suggests that only three per cent of respondents supported reversing the ban at that time.
zelenskyy did not act autocratically. rather, he appropriately targeted agents of foreign interference that were being indirectly financed and controlled by moscow. one imagines that most canadians would want the same done with beijing’s proxies should there ever be a future where china bombs our cities.
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some might believe that trump’s attacks against zelenskyy are part of some larger negotiating strategy to get russia to accept a peace deal. this seems implausible, given trump’s lack of self-restraint when commenting on friends and foes alike, but whether this is theatre or not is ultimately immaterial — vilifying allies this way is unwise, and in this case, it let’s russia’s vladimir putin, the actual dictator here, off the hook.
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