KYIV – While attention in Ukraine has been largely focused in recent weeks on the approaching local elections on October 25, this month has seen important developments in the area of foreign relations. But the trends in the respective spheres of domestic and external politics are potentially mutually contradictory and suggest an inevitable source of tension.
At home, there has been growing concern that the plummeting ratings of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People “mono-majority” party, if confirmed in the voting, will encourage oligarchic, populist and pro-Russian forces to regroup and mount a counteroffensive. The aim would be to make it impossible for the Ukrainian Parliament to function without the Servant of People faction, deprived in reality of its majority, making major concessions or agreeing to early parliamentary elections.