Ukraine: the chemistry of political processes

Politics is a kind of chemistry. It contains process catalysts, reactions, aggressive environments, and free radicals. Chemical scientists, following the laws of science, try not to combine dangerous compounds that can lead to real explosions or man-made disasters. The price of bad experiments is too high, so they try to avoid them. In politics, everything is completely different

Let us recall our very recent history and some of our great "alchemists". Viktor Yushchenko dissolved the old Constitution, synthesized a new one, and effectively transferred power to the parliament, which at that time consisted of a strange coalition of the center-right "Our Ukraine", ideologically close to it "Batkivshchyna" and openly left-wing socialists. The compound was not just unstable, it was unsustainable, so soon it was replaced by a completely different substance - the "Party of Regions". The further evolution of the reaction under the roof of Viktor Yanukovych is hardly of scientific interest, because it ultimately led to the explosion of 2014.

Petro Poroshenko, a capable student and employee of Yushchenko's laboratory, should have studied well the mistakes of his scientific supervisor. He had a rich toolkit: leading world scientists, considerable help in all experiments, but under one small condition - to act scientifically, taking into account progressive developments. But the "master" Poroshenko also failed to successfully complete the experiment, he also did not cope with chemicals. If Poroshenko somehow learned the lessons of coalition formation and constitutional "magic", then his personnel policy was a real "disaster". The simultaneous presence of Varangian reformers in the executive power and Ukrainian figures prone to shady schemes, with their eternal intention to "solve" everything, inevitably led to conflicts that were not limited to the offices on Bankova and Hrushevsky. Poroshenko considered the reformer minister his deputy and believed that such a thunderous mixture would take root. It did not take root, and periodically erupted due to one or another resignations, public washing of political laundry.

Under Yushchenko, such things could be explained by intrigues, quarrels or the ambitions of the politicians themselves, Yanukovych's system did not give the opportunity to leave at one's own will or to make a public confession. During Poroshenko's time, such "slanders" quickly gained notoriety, both inside the country and abroad. Western partners felt cheated, because they gave a loan of trust for the implementation of reforms, and not for the introduction of old schemes. Official Kyiv tried to make excuses, put out fire after fire, but later it became almost impossible to do so.

Previous great "alchemists" have already made enough mistakes so that the current president Volodymyr Zelenskyi, whose situation is much more complicated and dramatic, is dictated by a large-scale war with nuclear imperial predatory Russia, so that they are not repeated. Therefore, Zelensky has almost no right to make mistakes related to the overgrowth of power by a network of "dear friends", behavior, leadership style, the level of professionalism of which would provoke negative chain reactions with the trust factor of both Ukrainian society and the West, which thanks to its support at the moment is a real factor in Ukraine's domestic policy.

During a war of the scale of survival of the nation and statehood, it is impossible to allow the personnel conglomerate of the state administration to experience such type of reactions that would be characterized as irreversible. It is necessary to remove the attraction to old schemes over one's own reforming aspirations. If internally everything will move towards transparency and qualitative transformations, as Zelenskyi declares, then the external partner aid, which is currently at the "to be or not to be" level for Ukraine, will only show growth.

Eduard Yefimenko