With nearly 3:1 ratio of votes in favour of Zelenskiy, a comedian-cum-President-Elect in Ukraine, Europe"s future is as unforeseeable as ever in this century.
Brexit in the context of European Geopolitics
While it is not impossible to argue, that Brexit has managed to shake the continent quite significantly, the scale of the potential damage is incomparable.
While Brexit is definitely detrimental to the credibility of the mere establishment of the European Union and its affiliate institutions, the way, in which Brexit unfolded, may have actually played a positive role, contrary to the intent of the parties instigating and financing it – the weak Europe.
The process has been so painful, taken to the extremes of ridiculousness, whereby Brexit"s main supporters had to back down on their promises, populist double-decker slogans turning into outright lies and country"s PM Theresa May struggling to gain any support among Parliament and parlously failing – time after time again – to reach any actionable consensus.
The country, which for centuries has been the acme of sophistication, education and such, that holds the keys to everything innovative, advanced and scientific, — has turned into a global messy laughing stock, compared to a cheating wife, who wants to keep her half despite being the one to have violated the prenup right left and centre.
But even though a smooth Brexit would have been an ideal outcome for the geo-political powers interested in the "weak Europe" concept, the messy Brexit is still not a bad solution for them. Even though a smooth Brexit could have been a perfect ground for the snowball effect, when fuelled with sufficient doses of hatred, islamophobia, euro-scepticism and nationalism – potentially precipitating the collapse of the EU as such; this slow-burn messy Brexit still brings in high ROI, whereby one of the leaders of EU is in the state of permanent distress and the EU institutions have little business growing EUs influence on world"s stage – too busy rescheduling the Brexit yet another time.
Nonetheless, the diplomatic efforts of Donald Tusk and entire EU diplomacy have managed to significantly mitigate the potential damage of the Brexit. As, at the end of the day, the country, having dared to leave the Union, ended up in agony, internal arguments and financially hit – badly financially hit.
Ultimately, however bad the Brexit is for the European stability and level of influence on the world stage, the GB drama has been reduced to ridicule and ultimately has the reverse effect on the other member-states: it has made Europe stronger, potentially minus one, definitely messy now, but stronger.
With all the alleged connections between the ardent supporter of Brexit, UKIP"s leader Mr. Farage and WikiLeak"s Mr. Assange, as well as his great rapport with Mr. Banks, a good relations with Russian ambassador Yakovenko, it is not impossible to suggest some Russian influence in Brexit. In this case one has to believe, that weak Europe is in the interest of Russia, too – this is when it all starts to check out then.
Yellow Vests protests in France – another string to pull for weaker Europe.
By the time Mr. Macron was to be elected the president, Mr. Zuckerberg has learnt his lessons, based on Mr. Trump"s elections in 2016 and Brexit. He"d known by French elections, that political ads for other countries should not be paid in roubles. As bitter as this sounds, when it belongs to history, the fact remains undeniable: there was Russian collusion into USA elections via Cambridge Analytica.
After France electing Mr. Macron for its President, the state never left the orbit of Kremlin"s sphere of interest. Moreover, there was a laser-focused attention to the country, who didn"t bring much ROI after all the investments, looking to make that money work after all.
The happened the Yellow Vests. While a lot has been written on the topic, it is, once again, not improbable to assume, that Kremlin has some interest in weakening France – fuelling far right movements time after time again – in every means possible – be it men, finance or propaganda tools, like social media.
Italy, Germany and other EU states also see some minor meddling here and there from the East – but UK and France being thus far the biggest Guinea Pigs of the kremlin on the European terrain.
Ukraine chooses Mr. Zelenskiy: democratic elections in action. Democracy redefined.
While looking at the Ukraine"s elections, it is only possible to conclude, that Ukraine has had the most democratic elections. There is no other way to interpret the results with a record-breaking gap between the candidates, whereby the front-runner almost triples the incumbent President"s results. With every certainty, the OSCE ODIHR report will be such, that states the adherence to all the rules of the book – or a vast majority of them in the vast majority of precincts.
Unless.
The OSCE ODIHR embraces the fact, that the book has grown outdated.
Unless.
The society grows mature enough to realise, that rules of the play have evolved.
Unless.
Political leadership world over wakes up to the lessons of Brexit, Yellow Vests, USA elections 2016.
Only then do we have a chance to state, that Ukraine elections is a yet another example of a hacked democracy. If it has been hacked by external powers or internal oligarch rivalry – we still have to add up and dig deeper.
But we can surely state, that the elections will never be the same. World over. The rules have changed. The digital has overtaken. The social media has overpowered the traditional media. The conventional means stopped working. The billboards are a waste of money. The Instagram is the number one tool for elections. Movies and TV shows have tangible electoral power. TV show ratings get proportionally translated into electoral votes.
Some things never changed though: electorate likes "fresh faces". Electorate likes to be told things they want to hear. Electorate tends to depreciate achievements the very day after having being achieved. Electorate tends to take electoral promises at face value. If no promises made – electorate will dream up the promises and single-handedly start believing them.
Last but not least – electorate can be manipulated in million different ways in this digital era: faster, cheaper, more precisely targeted.
Lastest but not leastest – there is no way to monitor that. None.
Armed with all those conclusions, it is now hard for Observation Missions of any calibre to actually do their jobs properly. As freedom of speech and democracy suggest there should be no censorship of TV and social media. As troll profiles have been there for years and are more difficult to detect. As websites go up and down with little trace left: /eg: record2019.com/.
The rules of the book have changed. It is now down to political powers to learn them and to use them — or to abstain from them to the detriment of the result. The weight of the political advisors, akin to Cambridge Analytica, has grown multiple times. Most notably, it is kremlin, which is setting the trend in this new digital era election rule book. If there was an author of this new manual of digital era elections, it would definitely be located somewhere next to red square.
Russian trace in Ukraine"s election 2019.
Ukraine is indeed THE piece of the puzzle, that is required to bring back the much-missed in kremlin and much-coveted power of the USSR. Russia seems to have strong influence over all major states of the USSR, less Baltic countries and partially Georgia, but Ukraine drifting away towards Europe will mean the forever end of USSR.
Moreover, the prosperous Ukraine will be the clear sign of complete and utter failure of state, which Russian authorities cannot allow to become a reality. They keep telling their people how great Russia is and having a prosperous Ukraine next to its borders will be too obvious an evidence to the otherwise.
But Ukraine"s people are too independent and will take no orders from tzar. Ukraine"s people you don"t mess about with. Even kremlin knows that.
Based on this, it is only natural, that kremlin would try to meddle with Ukraine"s election in a subdued way. But let"s see if any traces are there in Ukraine"s elections from Russia"s side:
The frighteningly similar to Ukrainian elections of 2019 scenario is referred to back in 2014, whereby LDPR party leader email was hacked and the plan "Buratino" /Russian for Pinocchio/ was revealed. In the piece from 2019 though, the email dump from 2014 is reported to have disappeared with entire hosting service, though losses were only partial after all.
The LDPR leader has made few public commentaries about Mr. Zlenskiy future presidency, claiming, this would be a win-win scenario for Russia, stating the top trade-in, that Russia is seeking to gain from this president in exchange of financial support and cease fire in Donetsk area: no more pressure on Crimea sanctions plus a strip of land in south of Ukraine, that will allow fresh water delivery from Russia to Crimea.
Interestingly, one of the most influential politicians in Ukraine, Mr. Tymoshenko, mentioned a scenario back in 2017 interview, whereby Ukrainian oligarchs were to come up with a populist candidate, who has no "green" idea about how to rule a country. /Green is part of the surname of President-elect/.
It is no secret, that Zelenskiy is the unanimous favourite of Russian states TV channels and their loudest speakers – starting from prime-time TV show hosts to state-fed popular artists, like Okhlobystin and Porechenkov, who openly air their support for the candidate, adding "Crimea is ours".
Myrotvorets investigative team also did some digging into the relations of Zelenskiy presidential campaign and Russian-related individuals, whereby the email dump confirms relation between the Mykolaiv office of Ze team and one of the "bankers" of so-called Donetsk People Republic with ties to Russian security office.
All of the above taken into account, it is not improbable, that there was some Russian influence in the Ukraine"s elections – where direct or indirect.
Europe with Zelenskiy as president.
Ukraine has been the threshold of Europe for Russia – it has also been a safe buffer, that protects Europe from Russia per se — physically. It is in Ukraine, that Russia exercises its powers and stretches its muscles, killing thousands of people, while Europe may sleep well – meanwhile & so far. While mostly due to the enormous diplomatic efforts of the incumbent President Poroshenko and his diplomatic corpus, Europe has provided immeasurable support through sanctions and weaponry. On the other hand, it was because of guarantees, provided by some of the powerful European countries, that Ukraine got into this position in the first place – having given up the 3rdlargest nuclear power in exchange for territorial sovereignty guarantee in Budapest.
So how does Zelenskiy compare to Brexit and Yellow Vests after all? In terms of magnitude, this could have a much stronger political impact on the continent. If Russia manages to push now-weakened Ukraine with incompetent president back to its stifling embrace – the possibility is that Russia has every chance to regain the power of the USSR – potentially even to unite all the former republics under some kind of economic or political umbrella.
With weakened Europe and far-from-united America, growing influence of friendly China and freshly-renewed vows with Kin Jong Un, Russia could well be the next geopolitical leader of the world.
What a world that would be?
