Happy(?) anniversary to President Zelensky! A year ago today, the career comic unseated chocolate magnate and Very Serious Man Petro Poroshenko in a landslide victory, taking 73% of the vote. 1/

@ispionline has a series of pieces in honor of the occasion which I highly recommend, including this one by me - https://bit.ly/3cChNa6  - as well as contributions from @mminakov, @LeonidL, and others whose handles I couldn't find. 2/

Zelensky came in to office promising to end the war with Russia in Donbas. I argue that over the past year, he's annoyed just about every major party to the war, making the path to peace steeper. 3/

I argue that Zelensky's struggles to date aren't, as many analysts assert, down to naivety or willingness to appease Russia. Shoddy communication and unclear strategy have been factors. But a key problem is that he is a moderate, in an environment of polarization and hurt. 4/

He sees war with Russia as a tragedy, not a nation-building exercise. He speaks of citizens in Donetsk and Luhansk as people who ended up on the wrong side of the frontlines - not people who made the wrong civilizational choice. 5/

In his rhetoric, Ukraine's main advantage over Russia is the political system it is trying to build - transparent and human-centric - not its gene pool or its inherent "Europeanness". 6/

Zelensky shows no interest in pinpointing the line where Russian culture ends and Ukrainian culture begins - or in framing Donbas's frontlines as such. They're a set of trenches that never should have existed, not a cordon sanitaire. 7/

This is offensive to Ukrainians who believe fellow citizens died to demarcate this line - physically and metaphorically. It's annoying to some Westerners who take great comfort in their belief in this line. 8/

It's deeply inconvenient to those in the Kremlin who argue that they're "protecting Russian speakers" from an ultra-nationalist regime. And it's downright threatening to those in Donetsk and Luhansk whose careers, if not their freedom, depend on maintaining this myth. 9/

We often hear that Ze is willing to pay a price for peace that "the Ukrainian people" will never accept. "The Ukrainian people" here refers generally to a politically-active, largely English-conversant minority. @ngumenyuk addresses this here: https://bit.ly/2xFzxCW 

This minority has much to offer, but they are not coterminous with the Ukrainian people. I argue Ze's views are often more in line with a greater number of Ukrainians: Russia's behaving terribly, our leaders have let us down, this war sucks, period - and both sides are victims.

But as an inexperienced politician working within an oligarchic system, Zelensky has not developed the alliances he needs to convert this popular ethos into policy. Many Ukrainians are losing out as a result.(end)

** We at Crisis Group are working on a series of briefings on The Way Forward for peace in Ukraine. Our first installment comes on 28 April. Get excited! **