How can one evaluate President Zelensky’s first year in power?

When he was campaigning for the presidency, Zelensky relied on broad populist statements rather than a realistic program. This encouraged expectations among his voters of an immediate peace with Russia, a complete overhaul of Ukrainian politics, an easy vic­tory over corruption, and a radical improvement in their standard of living.

The Zelensky administration was composed almost entirely of new faces, which at first seemed to satisfy the public's demand for a new political class. However, some high-profile resignations during the first year indicated that not all the president's friends from the entertainment industry would become efficient and discreet state officials with a clear understanding of national interests. At the same time, Zelensky's complete overhaul of the cabinet after only six months showed that he was worried more about his approval ratings than about giving his ministers, who not so long ago had been introduced to the public as young, Western-educated professionals, a chance to produce results. In general, the emphasis on new faces in politics produced ambivalent results. In addition to some skillful managers generating promising ideas, a lack of qualifications and strategic thinking were also apparent among the members of the first cabinet that Zelensky's party formed under Prime Minister Oleksii Honcharuk (August 2019-March 2020) and the second one under Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. Many observers rejoiced at the re­tention in the Honcharuk cabinet of Poroshenko's last finance min­ister, Oksana Markarova, but decried the presence in both cabinets of another survivor from the Poroshenko era, the powerful Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov, a skilled political showman with his own agenda.

Some of Zelensky's initial moves were intended for public con­sumption, such as the bold proposal to carry out lustration of all the officials and parliamentarians from Poroshenko's time, as though Ukraine's real problems had started after the EuroMaidan. Ukraine's Western partners disapproved of this suggestion, and it was shelved quickly. However, criminal investigations of Poroshenko and some of his allies were opened and their summons for questioning highly publicized.

Zelensky's attempts to end the war in the Donbas also became controversial, and many experts felt that scrutiny of his actions by the patriotic opposition prevented some costly mistakes. At first, Zelensky focused on convening a meeting of the Normandy Four, which would show his acceptance as a statesman by both the West and Russia, as well as demonstrate to the domestic audience the re­newal of the peace process. However, Putin insisted on troop dis­engagement in several crucial sections of the front, which resulted conveniently in the Ukrainian army's abandonment of some con­trolling positions. These were to become neutral zones, but in some cases the enemy tried to move in.

Zelensky also recklessly accepted another of Putin's demands, which Poroshenko had avoided wisely for years: acceptance of the Steinmeier Formula requirement that Ukraine grant autonomy to the occupied areas without the prior removal of Russian troops. Mass protests erupted throughout Ukraine in October 2019, after Zelensky authorized the Ukrainian representative to commit to the formula. The president hastily retreated to Poroshenko's po­sition that no elections could take place there given the presence of Russian troops and the absence of Ukrainian control of the border. Prisoner exchanges, which came to include any civilian prisoners claimed by the opposing sides, also failed to bolster Zelensky's reputation as a peacemaker. Putin preferred to high­light the role that the pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians played in the exchanges and, on Russia's demand, Ukraine had to include in the exchanges its own policemen who were under investigation for killing protestors in 2014, which caused indignation among Maidan veterans.

Zelensky did get his Normandy Four summit in Paris in December 2019, even if it turned out to be a purely symbolic event without major breakthroughs; in all other respects, his foreign policy increas­ingly resembled Poroshenko's.

In the sphere of domestic policy, Zelensky tried to prove wrong those who accused him of being Kolomoisky's puppet and suspected that his agenda was limited to the realignment of the existing power groups. Using his party's parliamentary dominance after the July 2019 elections, he pushed through some remarkable pieces of legis­lation, which many previous Ukrainian leaders had talked about at election time but conveniently forgot about once they were in power. These included the law on presidential impeachment, the removal of parliamentary immunity from prosecution, and land reform.

The latter was particularly significant because it finally removed the prohibition on the sale of land in the countryside—a commu­nist legacy that favored oligarchs, as major agricultural businesses could rent land much more cheaply than having to purchase it (and paying a sales tax to the state). It was also easy for their political allies to sell the ban to the public by using populist language of the sacred Ukrainian soil that could be bought by foreign interests. If implemented properly, the land reform could potentially rejuvenate the Ukrainian economy and fill government coffers.

Finally, Zelensky tried hard to distance himself from Kolomoisky, who returned from abroad apparently expecting a turn of fortune. Nevertheless, under the watchful eye of Ukrainian civil society and the country's Western partners, the Zelensky administration did not do what many commentators had expected: reverse the nationaliza­tion in 2016 of Kolomoisky's Privat Bank, the county's largest bank, or pay the oligarch a massive amount in compensation. The govern­ment took over the bank in 2016 because Kolomoisky had allegedly been trying to bankrupt it through fraudulent lending schemes, and the authorities then spent some US$6 billion stabilizing the bank.

Ukraine entered the period of the coronavirus pandemic in rea­sonably good financial shape but also with an unfinished health­care reform, which the Zelensky administration was considering halting. To compensate for this and to account for the return of many Ukrainian temporary workers from some of the European countries that were hit hardest by COVID-19, the Ukrainian authorities tried to institute quarantine measures that were stricter than elsewhere. At least in the short run, Ukraine has managed to limit the scale of the pandemic, although the damage to the country's economy remains to be evaluated. As Zelensky marked the first year since his inauguration with a well-attended press conference held in May 2020 in a public park in Kyiv, opinion polls indicated that he was still the most popular politician by far in Ukraine.