FROM OUR REPORTER
KHARKIV – These are moments of uncertainty for Ukraine in its eighteenth month of resistance against the Russian invasion. Volodymyr Zelensky is forced to revive the morale of his people and strengthen internal consensus. The reasons are there for all to see: the long-awaited counter-offensive to drive out the enemies is proceeding too slowly, the autumn rains are approaching, the economy gasps, the military is already predicting Russian missile attacks on power lines and a second freezing winter . Above all, there are no ways out in negotiations, next year the Americans will go to the polls and the possibility that Donald Trump could win should not be underestimated, in any case the NATO front risks being distracted. “For a moment there was the illusion that the war could last for a short time, instead we need to think of a long time”, admit the local commentators.
This explains the “undoubtedly populist, albeit very popular” choice of the president to fire the heads of the 24 military districts in charge of recruiting the new recruits after the revelations by the local press of a ring of bribes. Natalia Kurdiaukova, a 46-year-old journalist and head of the Media Center in Kharkiv, tells it well. “It was by no means certain that all 24 officers were guilty. We have the trial evidence only against two or three of them, including that of the Odessa region: there was no need to dismiss them all. But Zelensky was aware of the fact that precisely in these painful months, when thousands of our soldiers die or are seriously injured at the front, the question of the corrupt who pay to avoid leaving touches people’s hearts. He calls them “traitors” of the country and glorifies the veterans. Now we run the opposite risk: that is, that an invalid war veteran also sends handicapped people to the trenches who really shouldn’t go there and risk creating more problems than anything else », he comments.
The measure is in line with the style of the president, elected in 2019 with the promise to fight the endemic corruption of the state, a heavy legacy of the Soviet era fully shared with Putin’s Russia. But for Zelensky it is now a question of reshaping his domestic policy so as to be able to respond to the questions of the country in difficulty. “The question is very simple. Since the end of last year, after the great victories in March-April against the Russian columns in Kiev and then with the successes in the autumn campaigns south of Kharkiv and in western Kherson, Zelensky and the General Staff had explained to us that we would had to tighten the belt and be patient. The winter ones would not have been useless suffering. The great spring-summer counter-offensive, facilitated by NATO aid, would have ensured that we would prevail. But that didn’t happen. May, June and July have passed, we are in mid-August and things are more or less at a standstill. There is a widespread sense of disappointment. You read it on social media, in the conservative choices of entrepreneurs, it transpires from the speeches of soldiers, the wounded, the families of the dead. It is not strange that now we are much more intolerant of corruption and inefficiency», explains Serhyi Petukhov, former Deputy Minister of Justice and professor of International Law in Kiev.
A taboo topic in public for government officials, but of which many are well aware, is that of maintaining internal unity in the event that the possibility of a territorial compromise with Russia should begin to be discussed. “Ours is a society traumatized by war. We have discovered firsthand that the Russians want to wipe us out as a country and as a people. We must fight for our freedom and national independence, which is why the dogma of internal unity must not be scratched until the end of the war», reiterated Kristina Berdynskykh, a well-known journalist from the capital. Political commentators see no alternative to military victory against an enemy whose ultimate goal is the annihilation of Ukraine. And yet, the very possibility that international pressure to start negotiations will grow in the autumn induces Zelensky to seek consensus. The future remains all uphill and the president needs as much support as possible.