Since the all-out invasion of February 2022, opposition parties and leading politicians have rarely criticized the actions of President Zelenskyy in public, limiting their attacks to specific cases and arguing that a war for national survival is a time for unity.
Exceptions have included strong disagreements over funding for the United News Marathon, a pooled TV news show, which critics argue violates freedom of speech, and anger at restrictions on opposition politicians going abroad to engage in political forums or with European institutions.
The February 28 White House incident appears to have prompted opposition politicians to resurface and return to the political fray. A week after the dispute, Politico reported that the Trump administration had held talks about wartime elections with Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, two of Ukraine’s most influential opposition politicians.
Trump’s team has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction at Kyiv’s failure to hold a wartime vote, despite its prohibition under Ukraine’s constitution, and the president has called Zelenskyy “a dictator without elections.”
Poroshenko, President of Ukraine from 2014-2019, came second in the last elections and is the most famous opposition politician, building his political strategy around the army and criticism of Zelenskyy’s government. Since the start of the invasion, he has focused on international advocacy and assistance for Ukraine’s armed forces.
Immediately after the scandal in the White House, Poroshenko abstained from criticizing Zelenskyy and appealed for unity. But by mid-March, after his reported talks with the Trump administration, he scolded the Kyiv government in an interview with the German newspaper Bild.
He accused Zelensky’s team of “moving the country to a dictatorship” and violating the rule of law, echoing both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said Ukraine needed to halt all offensive operations in Russian territory and build its strategy around defense.
The former president, who leads the biggest Christian Democrat party, has some support and strong ties to conservative politicians in the West. A March 24 opinion poll showed distrust for Poroshenko at 75% and Tymoshenko at 83%. Zelenskyy’s rating was 60% positive.
Trump is “the only person who can stop the war,” Poroshenko told Bild, and highlighted his positive experience of working with the US president during his first term. The comments appear part of a strategy to position himself as the candidate who would enjoy most support from the US administration if he won.
Tymoshenko, the second Ukrainian interlocutor with Washington, is a former prime minister who has run for president three times, coming second in 2010 and 2014, and third in 2019.
Her Batkivshchyna Party, which controls about 8% of the seats in parliament, has broadly aligned itself with Zelenskyy’s party in most legislative votes. After her talks with the Trump administration were revealed, Tymoshenko made clear she still opposes elections during wartime and emphasized that she was negotiating with a range of allies in pursuit of a “just” peace.
The other lawmakers who vote with Zelenskyy’s party in parliament are the once pro-Russian politicians who still enjoy a share of political support. After several arrests of prominent colleagues, they have abstained from openly confronting Zelenskyy, and have tacitly supported his legislation.
But they have not been idle. There are unconfirmed reports that Sergey Liovochkin, a leader of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform For Life has visited Washington at least three times since Trump`s return to power. He has strong ties to US Republicans, so any visits suggest the administration might see a role for such pro-Russian politicians as possible alternatives to Zelenskyy.
At the same time, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, former Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and current Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK, remains in the shadows. According to the latest polls, he has the best chance of beating Zelensky in the next election.
His growing popularity led to suggestions that his removal from the army in 2023 was a political move by a president concerned about a potential rival. Recent setbacks in the Donbas region and the rapid retreat of Ukrainian forces from Kursk have led to a new wave of criticism of the current Commander-in-Chief and the decision to remove Zaluzhniy.
While Zaluzhniy has not explicitly commented on recent events, his role as a potential political rival, or even a king-maker, could be crucial when elections are held.
How soon that might be is unclear. What is certain is that the scenes in the Oval Office, and Trump’s talks with the Ukrainian opposition, have set up a return of political competition in the months ahead.
Mykyta Vorobiov is a Ukrainian political adviser, journalist, and political science student at Bard College Berlin. For the last two years, he has been developing articles on politics and law for CEPA, VoxEurop, JURIST, and others.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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