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bne October 2019 Cover story I 33
from “Lisbon to Vladivostok”, which is the ultimate goal of Putin’s foreign policy and is a phrase trotted out by western leaders when they want to soften Putin up for concessions.
Macron followed up with an even stronger statement of the need to find an accommodation with Russia, saying “Europe without Russia is inconceivable”.
bne IntelliNews sources say there has been a lot of activity between Paris, Berlin and Moscow in the background ahead of the first so-called Normandy Four meeting (Russia, France, Germany,
Ukraine) slated for later in September – the first time Zelenskiy will attend. And it appears that all sides are looking to restart the stalled Minsk II process to bring the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas to an end.
One suggestion is to adopt former German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s plan of breaking the Minsk accord into pieces where sanctions can be removed incrementally against achieving specific but simpler goals. The prisoners' release, coming as fast as it has and before Putin and Zelenskiy have formally met, strongly suggests that a relatively
complex deal along these lines has already been discussed in some detail.
This is the second attempt at swapping the prisoners. The swap was reportedly underway on August 30, but was called off at the last minute. The swap was reported in a Facebook post that was later reshared by Ruslan Riaboshapka (Ukraine’s new prosecutor general), but turned out to be incorrect.
On the Russian side were 35 prisoners most of whom were captured in Donbas and charged with illegally waging war on Ukraine’s territory.
Zelenskiy overtakes Putin in Russian popularity polls as Russians become increasingly vocal
The popularity of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has overtaken that of Russian President Vladimir Putin according to Russian independent pollster the Levada Center and Ukrainian pollster Ratings Group, just as Russians get more vocal in calling out the state's injustices.
According to the later, Zelenskiy's popularity has risen from 58% in July to 71% in August/September according to
a Ratings Group poll in September, overtaking Putin for the first time. The Russian president has seen his popularity fall slightly from 68% to 67% over the same period, according to a Levada poll.
Zelenskiy was swept to power in a landslide victory in April and after his party followed up with another landslide in the July general election, his government has thrown itself into the game with a welter of high profile anti-corruption legislation. Zelenskiy also pulled off a major PR victory
by organising a POW swap with Russia, the first major exchange of prisoners since hostilities began five years ago.
The result is Zelenskiy's popularity at home has soared with a majority of Ukrainians believing the country is going in the right direction for the first time since the Euromaidan demonstrations in 2014. And Zelenskiy's personal popularity continues to rise fast, even as Ukraine’s reputation amongst the international community has taken a body blow after the house of former National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) governor Valeria Gontareva was torched in an arson attack on September 17.
However, now Zelenskiy's popularity has spilled over into Russia. Ukraine just held two of the most vibrant and hotly
disputed elections in the last three decades in Eastern Europe that were widely followed in Russia. The official Russian broadcasters tried to play down Ukraine’s elections and muddy the water, but as bne IntelliNews reported,
the influence of state controlled TV has been falling fast in recent years as most young people have moved online to get their news and the whole Ukrainian show was live streamed on the internet with Zelenskiy making heavy use of social media in this campaign.
The real choice offered Ukrainian voters and the heat of the campaigns stands in stark contrast to the turgid nature of the recent Moscow city government elections and the brutal police beatings protestors received when the leading opposition candidates tried to demonstrate against the authorities' decision to bar most of them from the election.
Ukraine is now playing a complicated role in Russian politics where it is not leading the way per se, but it is certainly informing Russians of alternatives and fuelling a process of political maturation that is clearly under way.
While Putin still maintains tight control over the political process there has been a noticeable mushrooming of dissent in the public forum and increasingly from inside the establishment.
The first noticeable rebellion against the authorities came in August when investigative reporter Ivan Golunov was arrested on trumped up drug charges. The “I am/We are Ivan Golunov” protest that rapidly appeared forced the Kremlin to back down and release Golunov. The Kremlin is now more vulnerable than it appears.
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