Ukraine: Third time’s a charm?

No promises, so no disappointments,’’ said Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky during the campaign that made him the president. It was a daring, even cynical, statement for a politician, but he is no politician. Zelensky is a comedian who doesn’t have much in the way of policies, but he does represent the fresh start voters wanted in May.

After two non-violent popular revolutions in 2004 and 2014 that promised change, twice the country ended up back in the hands of the same old corrupt post-soviet oligarchs. Zelensky did not need to make promises. He just had to be different.

He hasn’t done much since he was elected because he doesn’t have a majority in the Rada (parliament). In fact, he doesn’t have anybody in the Rada, because his party – Servant of the People – was formed only last year. His first priority had to be a new parliament. The poll is next Sunday.

If Zelensky’s party doesn’t win an absolute majority in the Rada, it will at least get 45-48 per cent of the vote. Then he just has to pick a coalition partner from four smaller parties. The likeliest is Holos, a new party founded by rockstar Svyatoslav Vakarchuk. Yes, I know. Two showbiz figures, complete novices in politics, trying to run a country of 44 million people, which is in a proxy war with Russia. What could possibly go wrong?

But if you are ready for generational turnover, as Ukrainian voters are, then by definition the politicians you back will be younger – Zelensky is 41 and Vakarchuk is 44 – with little experience in politics. Most members of the new Rada will also be tyros. Vakarchuk’s party is so dedicated to changing things it is not letting any member of the current parliament run on its list. Zelensky’s parliamentary list is more varied: About one-third reformers; one-third people with personal or business ties to Zelensky; and one-third people with ties to Ihor Kolomoisky.

This is when the red lights start flashing, because Kolomoisky is a major oligarch who owns the TV channel that has been broadcasting Zelensky’s show, Servant of the People, for the past three years. On the show Zelensky plays a high school teacher who is suddenly elevated to the presidency by voters after his rant about the appalling state of Ukrainian politics, secretly taped by a student, goes viral.

Now, Zelensky leads a real political party with that name and he is living the miracle.

Or is he following a cunning strategy that he and Kolomoisky settled on about four years ago?

What does Kolomoisky get out of it? Well, he was self-exiled in Israel because of a huge business and legal dispute with Petro Poroshenko, another oligarch who was president and might send him to jail. Kolomoisky could only go home if Poroshenko lost the election. But why would Zelensky play along? He was already successful and he could probably have sold his TV show to some other outlet. Did he plan to do Kolomoisky’s bidding once he got the job?

Thinking too hard about this can drive you crazy. For example, Zelensky has just appointed Andriy Bohdan, once Kolomoisky’s lawyer, to a key job in the president’s office. That is suspicious.

However, Bohdan has also served as lawyer to almost every other oligarch in the country, and probably knows where all the bodies are. That would be useful if Zelensky really plans to go after them all, which he must if he intends to change the way the country is run. You can argue it both ways. But most Ukrainians believe Zelensky is the real thing – and so do I. Of course, I have been wrong a couple of times in the past.

It is no longer possible to ignore older people because there are now so many of them that there is talk of raising the pension age.