How should one evaluate Petro Poroshenko’s tenure as president (2014-2019)?

Poroshenko scored an easy victory in the first round because voters saw him as best qualified to lead the country in a time of war. Once the war was over—which seemed possible at the time—he would be qualified to initiate major reforms.

The Ukrainian political system gives the head of state exclu­sive control over foreign, military, and security affairs, along with the prerogative to nominate ministers in these fields. Everything else is technically the responsibility of the prime minister and the cabinet selected by the parliament. In practice, Ukrainian presi­dents usually get involved in all major decisions and are seen as responsible for everything from military defeats to corruption to the decline in book publishing. In recent decades, they have often managed eventually to install prime ministers from their own parties.

Poroshenko's honeymoon with Ukrainian voters did not last long. As explained elsewhere in this book, in late 2014 and early 2015 Ukrainian forces suffered major setbacks at the front, forcing Poroshenko to accept an ambiguous peace plan that was poten­tially disastrous for Ukraine as part of the second Minsk agreement. These events also undermined his reputation in the very fields constituting the president's prerogative. Cooperation between the Poroshenko Bloc and the People's Front did not go well, but this turned out to be a blessing because the cabinet headed by Arsenii Yatseniuk from the People's Front ended up being blamed for all the economic troubles caused by the war. Yatseniuk pinned his last hope on the highly publicized project of building a “European wall” along the Russian border, but it too became an embarrassment when the public discovered that only a small section was built and all the money had disappeared.

As the People's Front approval rating dropped to below 2 per­cent, Poroshenko launched the slow and painful process of reforming the country in wartime. In April 2016 he began collaborating with the new Prime Minister Volodymyr Groisman, who represented the Poroshenko Bloc. The People's Front stayed on as a partner in the co­alition, but Poroshenko's people now had the upper hand in the cab­inet. This development gave Poroshenko more power, but also made him more responsible for the outcome of the reforms.

In a relatively short time Poroshenko managed to transform a conscript army, suffering from decades of neglect and corruption, into a trained and well-armed professional fighting force capable of holding its ground in the Donbas. This was accomplished by exempting young conscripts from contract-only frontline service while maintaining conscription. He also dissolved some volunteer formations and reorganized others into regular army units. On the international scene, Poroshenko proved a skillful negotiator, who worked well with Ukraine's Western partners. He understood when procrastination could be in his country's best interests, delaying the implementation of the long-term provisions of Minsk II, which went beyond de-escalation and humanitarian issues. The president also rightfully took credit for the 2017 introduction of visa-free travel to the European Union, an important sign for Ukrainian citizens that their most recent revolution had not been in vain.

At home, Poroshenko should be credited for working closely with citizen activists and foreign advisors on making government affairs more transparent. The public electronic register of govern­ment procurements at all levels allowed for civic supervision over what had been a major source of corruption. The introduction of obligatory electronic declarations of assets by all parliamentarians and most public servants offered, at least in theory, a mechanism for detecting the misuse of power for personal gain.

The reforms did not proceed easily, and ambassadors of Western countries often had to act as intermediaries between civil society and the government. They even showed up in parliament on days when crucial legislation was to be voted on. In the second part of his term, Poroshenko often played the middleman, explaining to the West why certain measures could not be passed or implemented yet. It became increasingly clear that he practiced the traditional style of politics in which the accommodation of power groups and the symbiosis of business with politics remained the norm. Most foreign reformers invited after the EuroMaidan Revolution left soon after the system rejected them. Only the US-born and -educated acting Minister of Health, Ulana Suprun, soldiered on between 2016 and 2019, trying to build a comprehensive insurance-based healthcare system in Ukraine modeled on British and Canadian examples.

Ironically, the Ukrainian public at large gave Poroshenko (or Suprun) little to no credit for the generally successful first stage of the medical reform. Nor did it appreciate the decentralization re­form or the introduction of a helpful “single window” principle in citizen interaction with the state bureaucracy. His army reform and efforts to curb corruption also did not register as much as they should have. The public focused instead on Poroshenko's confec­tionary empire, which operated a factory in Russia until 2017; his registration while in office of an offshore company in Cyprus; and the persistent claim in some media—later shown to apply only to 2015—that his personal wealth had increased as a result of the war.

The president's initiatives in the cultural sphere also proved divi­sive. The 2015 “decommunization” legislation led to the widespread removal of Soviet monuments and street names, the latter often renamed in honor of radical Ukrainian nationalist heroes of the to­talitarian age. The public outside of Ukraine's western regions was not always receptive to this rapid turnaround, which also neglected to condemn the legacy of Russian imperial policies under the tsars. The creation, late in Poroshenko's term, of a new Orthodox church independent from the Russian one but recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople, was often interpreted as part of his re-election campaign. The transfer of parishes to this new church lost much of its initial impetus after Poroshenko's electoral defeat.

Going into the presidential election of 2019, Poroshenko found himself facing low approval rankings linked to the prevalent perception of stalled reforms and a deteriorating standard of living. He decided to make “The army, the language, and faith” the slogan of his campaign, betting on the possibility that the country at war would support a more patriotic incumbent with a proven record of building strong armed forces. However, his campaign stumbled from the start, never really gaining traction outside of the capital, the western regions, and his home ground—the latter also the center of his confectionary business.

As Poroshenko's desperation increased, two incidents sealed the fate of his campaign. In November 2018 the Russian coast guard fired on and captured three small Ukrainian navy boats trying to pass through the Strait of Kerch separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. The two Ukrainian gunboats and a tugboat were being transferred to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, a procedure that had taken place in the past with no incident, following a notification of the Russian side. The two sides disputed whether the notification was sent this time, and more generally Russia's right to control shipping through the Strait of Kerch, which Russia started claiming after its annexation of the Crimea.

Poroshenko responded by declaring martial law for 60 days, which would have given him widespread powers and made campaigning impossible for other candidates, but parliament and Western stockholders balked. In the end, parliament approved only a watered-down martial law for 30 days, applying exclusively to regions bordering on Russia and complete with Poroshenko's assurances that the authorities would not use more extreme powers, such as confiscation of property or limitation of personal freedoms. Instead of spurring Ukrainians to unite around the commander-in- chief, Poroshenko's response to the incident at the Strait of Kerch exposed his vulnerabilities.

A corruption scandal erupting just a month before the first round crushed Poroshenko's last hopes. Journalists exposed an outrageous scheme to smuggle used parts from Russian tanks and armored per­sonnel carriers into Ukraine and sell them at exorbitant prices as new. Poroshenko's long-time business associate, who was serving as deputy secretary of the Council of National Security and Defense, reportedly aided and abetted his son and a group of other state officials in running this scheme.⁵

After coming a distant second in the first round, Poroshenko organized the passage of a long-awaited bill on the status of the Ukrainian language that made it mandatory for all public-sector employees. This law, which somehow had not been among the president's priorities for the previous five years, helped to turn the page after the corruption scandal and consolidated the patri­otic electorate around Poroshenko. The language law was likely being saved for a projected runoff battle against a pro-Russian candidate, but under the circumstances Poroshenko used it to solidify his support leading into the parliamentary elections of 2019, in which he returned to parliament at the head of a small faction.