There will be Russians in Kharkov, and barbecues in May! There is a new scandal around the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky – within two days he sent two mutually exclusive messages to the Ukrainians: first he recorded a video message urging them not to panic and think no more about a possible war with Russia, but about barbecue in May, and then gave an interview to the Washington Post ”, where he announced the imminent possible capture of the city of Kharkov by the Russian army.
As a result, Kharkiv is in shock, and in Kiev, the people for the first time began to think about the evacuation of children “in which case”, but so far no one has stormed banks and bought buckwheat in the markets.
“I was not at all disappointed in Zelensky – the one who does nothing is not mistaken, and the rating of our presidents always went down by the middle of the term. – calmly says “MK” a former government official from the time of Poroshenko. – You don’t understand, he was just addressing different audiences! One, ours, had to be reassured, and from the other, the American, it was urgent to get weapons – he did everything right. He says there:
“Russia can take Kharkov and give us weapons,” but here guys, we have been at war for the eighth year, the army will defend itself, but you will still have barbecue in May. I regret that he didn’t say this before, otherwise I hadn’t slept well for a couple of nights at that time, now I’ve calmed down. ”
In Kiev, it is really a little restless – on Friday, for example, schools were massively “mined”, where festive events on the eve of the Day of Unity were thus disrupted. On January 22, Ukraine marks the anniversary of the signing in 1919 of the Act of Unification of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the West Ukrainian People’s Republic – pieces of the just crumbling Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. Prior to that, telephone terrorists “mined” three or four metro stations and large shopping centers every day. In one week of January,
the country was visited by the director of the CIA, the US Secretary of State and the German Foreign Minister without any plans, and on TV there was mainly news about urgent free deliveries of weapons and a scandal with another failure of the authorities – an unsuccessful attempt to imprison ex-president Petro Poroshenko .
At the same time, political observers are looking forward to the February ratings – how much will support for Zelensky fall against this background?
“Do you remember the famous debate at the stadium of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky? – calmly tells the correspondent of “MK” the current official of the current administration of Zelensky. – Then everyone confirmed their delusions, those who were for Poroshenko sincerely believed that he won, all those who are for Zelensky – exactly the opposite. A man believes what he wants to believe! They continue to believe in Zelensky even now.”
The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has a difficult period – the Rubicon has been passed, half of his term is already over, and people don’t like him very much anymore – for the former successful actor bathed in adoration, this is a real tragedy. There is a real political and information storm around Ukraine, and its president had a rest for almost a month and was noted for a unique achievement – he wrote down an appeal to the people in the Carpathians while skiing down the mountain.
After that, for several days, Kiev journalists were looking for their president in the Seychelles – there was a leak that Elena Zelenskaya was resting on the islands with children, friends and employees of the state security service, but it was unknown whether the husband of the first lady went there for a couple of days to rest.
At the same time, Volodymyr Zelenskyy remained in Kiev, in 2021 he did a complete political somersault – he entered the year and ended it with approximately the same rating of just over 20%. With all the setbacks, ups and downs with these support figures, he is still the most important contender for victory in the elections if they were held next Sunday.
Zelensky is no longer supported by the oligarchic consensus – on the country’s highest-rated TV channels of Rinat Akhmetov since autumn, the brightest opposition speakers have been freely conveying their position to the population. Since autumn, the president’s rating has fallen and … has been firmly fixed. Since December, no new scandals have almost had any effect on the level of voter love for their president. Love, it’s like that – it doesn’t reason. Zelensky is still tightly clung to by his nuclear electorate.
“You see, I just believe him, because of my managerial experience, I understand what insoluble problems he faced, and instead of supporting him, they tear him apart, find fault with his words, they don’t like mackerel for 8 hryvnias. – a respected doctor who moved to Kiev from Donetsk says hotly to MK. –
They, like small “pigs” at school, cling to him for every reason. Everything that happens with criticism of Zelensky reminds me of what happened with Klitschko – he may not be an ancient Roman tribune, but he is a normal person, and he was represented as an idiot for every word. Everything that is happening now in relation to the President of Ukraine is not constructive.”
The story about mackerel for 8 hryvnias happened before the New Year: under the patronage of Elena Zelenskaya, school meals are being reformed in Ukraine, and they are trying to explain its essence in different ways. The president’s wife was shown at home in a culinary program, where she talked about her favorite mackerel recipes, for example, which she now buys in stores herself and even remembers the price – 8 hryvnia (23 rubles).
Mackerel in Ukrainian stores now costs about 20 times more, the PR people of the President’s Office urgently threw in the idea that the first lady had in mind the price per 100 grams, but the damage had already been done – the cry on social networks was really incredible.
But Vitaliy Klitschko was very insultingly represented by Vladimir Zelensky as a stupid person for many years in a row in the numbers of his humorous show, the mayor of Kiev and the president of Ukraine still have a strained relationship on this basis. But it’s useless to remind Zelensky’s sympathizers about this – they simply believe in him, regardless of any arguments, earlier in Ukraine this was the voter of Yulia Tymoshenko, who at the peak of political support even had such a slogan: “Vote with your heart!”.
“Zelensky absolutely wonderfully describes the situation, all his speeches are understandable and intelligible. – explains “MK” supporter of the current president, who works in a Kiev taxi. – In fact, a lot has been done, but there are always opponents and they will always criticize. And it’s not all that fast – “plant three friends” in Singapore also probably did not happen right away. Probably, it was a long work, some law enforcement agencies lined up, then they planted, started shooting – years passed. And in history it is then preserved in such a way that it seems that he came – and immediately won!
As it is not surprising, but supporters of Volodymyr Zelensky can be found in Donetsk.
“He really didn’t bring the promised peace, but it doesn’t just happen that way. – says “MK” the administrator of the restaurant Maria. – He said at the very beginning that each of us is a president. This means that each of all our “presidents” must work for peace, each one does not complete it, we have discord in our country – opinions are completely different. We still believe in him and respect him, because he is the president.”
The phenomenon of maintaining the rating of Vladimir Zelensky over time will still be studied by sociologists and historians. All Ukrainian presidents, as a rule, under the weight of criticism, lost popular support much faster and more abruptly than the current sixth elected leader of the country.
But his “Teflonism” does not apply to his party at all – the first January measurements of public opinion gave an amazing result. On January 20, the results of their poll were published by the Ukrainian research company Gradus Research, and according to them, for the first time, Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party came out on top in the ratings without any allowance for sociological errors – it has already outstripped the Servants of the People by a solid 4%.
With these Ukrainian party ratings, everything is also interesting. Before the New Year, there were many different measurements, their latest result was the appearance in the polling tables of two new, as yet non-existing party projects – potential parties of the ex-Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Dmitry Razumkov and actor, volunteer and patriot Serhiy Prytula. Prytula is a well-known Ukrainian TV presenter, ex-resident of the Ukrainian version of the Comedy Club, a volunteer who, in particular, has been supplying drones to the Ukrainian army since 2014, and he also recently took part as a candidate in the election of the mayor of Kiev.
So, in the capital, his rating went over 7%, and in the whole country it goes over 3% – these are quite “parliamentary” starting figures, and Serhiy Prytula has already announced plans to build his party.
So, as MK sources say, focus groups show that Serhiy Prytula is not taking votes from Petro Poroshenko at all. People who were disappointed in Volodymyr Zelensky suddenly turned out to be ready to vote for Serhiy Prytula. The idea that a good, cheerful and handsome guy, not a professional manager, but just a comedian, can come to power is still alive among Ukrainian voters.
Even among those dissatisfied with the results of the activities of Vladimir Zelensky.
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