Reaction to Volodymyr Zelensky’s landslide victory in Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election ranged from highly enthusiastic to thoroughly apocalyptic. One side maintains that the victory marks the advance of a new type of Ukrainian identity and the gradual overcoming of traditional regional cleavages. The opposite view considers it a total defeat of the nation-state building project that was ushered in by the Revolution of Dignity and helped defend Ukraine against Russian aggression for the past five years. What are the factors at play in determining the preferences of Ukrainian voters?
Dr. Mykola Riabchuk is a senior research associate at the Kuras Institute of Political and Nationalities Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv. The author of numerous books and articles on topics such as civil society, national identity, and political transition in post-Communist states, especially Ukraine, in 2019/20 he was a visiting scholar at the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine at the University of Toronto.