As political unrest increases in Ukraine, opposition leader calls for unity
Ukrainian opposition leader Petro O. Poroshenko has called for political unity as unrest grows in his country after he was banned from traveling abroad, which he said was aimed at lobbying for more military support.
“It was a surprise and shock for me when they tried to stop me,” Mr. Poroshenko said in an interview on Monday, three days after he was prevented from leaving Ukraine for a planned trip to Poland and then to the United States. what he said were meetings in Congress and the Pentagon.
But he urged politicians in a video call to stick together and end the personal attacks that have caused division at a critical time for Ukraine. “The first loser is Ukraine,” he said, “because we are giving extra fuel to Ukraine’s skeptics.”
Ukraine’s intelligence service, the SBU, said on Saturday it had blocked the departure of Mr Poroshenko, a former president who leads the opposition in the Ukrainian parliament, to prevent Russia from using his trip for propaganda purposes. The SBU said Mr Poroshenko planned to meet Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who the secret service said has close ties to Russia.
Mr Poroshenko denied that he planned to meet Mr Orban. He said he had written him a letter last month but had not made an appointment. Mr Orbán is the main obstacle to considering a package of European aid to Ukraine.
Mr. Poroshenko said his planned meetings in Poland and the United States were important for the country ahead of crucial decisions on aid to Ukraine in the United States. “This is one of the most important ten days in Ukrainian history,” he said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky was scheduled to make a direct appeal to US senators on Tuesday to remind them what is at stake if they fail to quickly approve emergency military aid for his country, but unexpectedly withdrew from the session. That warning came a day after White House officials said the United States would soon run out of money to send weapons to Ukraine.
The Democratic-led Senate will vote Wednesday on whether to approve more than $61 billion in Ukraine-targeted aid as part of a $106 billion national security package, coming as Republican support for funding Ukraine’s war effort decreases and an emergency funding package is drafted that is stalled in Congress.
The political unrest in Ukraine comes as the country enters its second winter of full-scale war with Russia and the public braces for more attacks on cities and infrastructure as troops face intense fighting on three fronts.
A summer counter-offensive has not led to a hoped-for breakthrough against Russian defenses on the southeastern front, and while Ukrainian forces have achieved some success in the south and against Russian naval forces in the Black Sea, they have suffered continued attacks in the East.
As the military campaign encountered difficulties, criticism began to mount within Ukraine’s political leadership. The commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, recently wrote in a newspaper that the war was at a stalemate and would remain so unless Ukraine received more and more technologically advanced military equipment. Mr. Zelensky quickly rebuked the general and denied that the war was at a stalemate.
Since then, rumors have been circulating that General Zaluzhny will be replaced. A lawmaker from Mr. Zelensky’s party, Mariana Bezuhla, who is vice-chairman of the Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence in Parliament, has repeatedly criticized General Zaluzhny on Facebook for planning failures, even conduct a poll asking people to vote for his replacement.
The attacks on General Zaluzhny, who is hugely popular within the armed forces, have led others to criticize the government and Zelensky’s administration, with complaints that the president is interfering in military decisions and firing commanders without consulting his military chief.
Vitali Klitschko, Kiev’s popular mayor and former boxing champion, expressed support for General Zaluzhny in an interview this weekend, saying the general was right to tell the truth about the situation. And the mayor took a swipe at Mr. Zelensky, saying his decline in the opinion polls was the result of mistakes he made in not preparing for the war.
Both Mr Klitschko and Mr Poroshenko are political rivals of Mr Zelensky but had largely hidden their differences since the Russian invasion last February. But rivalries have emerged from time to time, such as when Mr Zelensky criticized the mayor for not adequately preparing the city’s air raid bunkers.
Mr. Poroshenko said he went to the president in the first days of the war to extend his hand. “I told him: ‘I am not the leader of the opposition, and you are no longer my opponent.’ Russian tanks were miles from my office,” he said.
Personal rivalry was most likely behind Mr. Poroshenko’s travel ban, one analyst said, but ultimately Mr. Poroshenko and Mr. Zelensky agreed on the need to fight Russia and build alliances with the West. “Their cooperation is inevitable,” said analyst Petro Burkovskiy, executive director of a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank called the Democratic Initiatives Foundation.
The politics was a sign of a functioning democracy, emphasized Oleksiy Haran, professor of comparative politics at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. “Ukraine remains a democracy even under martial law,” he said. “There are opposition channels. There is a lot of discussion, it is very important to keep that in mind.”
He said blocking Poroshenko’s trip was a “mistake by the authorities.”
Yehor Cherniev, a lawmaker from Mr. Zelensky’s party, said Mr. Poroshenko would be given another chance to travel.
And while Mr. Cherniev, deputy chairman of the Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, agreed that an end to Western aid would spell disaster for Ukraine, he was dismissive of Mr. Poroshenko’s influence can exert on the state of affairs. “He knows a lot of people, but there is no evidence that they listen to him,” he said.
Mr. Poroshenko, who has long supported a pro-Western, pro-European trajectory for Ukraine, said he planned to spend his trip lobbying for continued commitment to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Most important, Mr. Poroshenko said, was the decision facing Congress on the financial and military aid package for Ukraine proposed by the Biden administration. He said he planned to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican lawmakers, as well as Pentagon officials.
The withholding of vital military aid poses an existential threat to Ukraine as the country faces new Russian attacks, he said.
“We have an extreme shortage of ammunition on the front lines, and I know that directly from the soldiers,” he said. “This is a question of Ukraine’s existence.”
He also made a direct appeal to American members of Congress.
“Please don’t block the Ukrainian army,” he said. “Do not block the Ukrainians’ ability to defend ourselves, because we are defending the entire free world, including the US.”
Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from Mykolaiv, Ukraine.