CHECK – Did Volodymyr Zelensky really “imprisoned all his political opponents”?

War leader for more than 1000 days, Volodymyr Zelensky is regularly welcomed as a hero on the European continent. But according to some Russophiles, it should rather be considered as a “dictator”. This is what François Asselineau says. This November 17, the president and founder of the UPR accused the Ukrainian president of having “imprisoned his opponents” et “bans parties”. A narrative that has been found word for word for several days on several accounts identified as relays of Russian propaganda in France (new window).

Each time, the proof used by these Internet users is the same: a video of a certain Tulsi Gabbard. Formerly elected to the United States House of Representatives, she was appointed by Donald Trump to the post of director of national intelligence. An authentic video, which has not been hijacked, since it can be found on its official YouTube channel (new window). If the sequence dates back to January 2023, well before the election of the new American president, it is indeed an extract from the American program “The Rubin report”.

Questioned by conservative presenter Dave Rubin, the one who accused the United States and NATO of provoking the war in Ukraine, promises “the truth about President Zelensky”. “Let’s look at the type of democracy Zelensky leads in Ukraine”she says to the camera by way of introduction. “Not only did he imprison his political opponents early on. But he banned all of their political parties (…) There is no freedom of expression, and no place for political opposition.” “This is the man they chose as a figure of prow of democracyfinally launches the former MP, whose Russian media (new window) now paint a particularly laudatory portrait. So what are these criticisms really based on?

Parties accused of having “links” with Russia

The idea that Volodymyr Zelensky banned “all political parties” in Ukraine is not new. It is no less misleading. As we already explained to you in this article (new window)a national security and defense council met https://tf1info-backoffice.prod.athena.tf1.fr/contentsni from March 2022 aimed to take note of the “suspension” of eleven political parties considered close to Russia. They were then officially banned in June 2022 by decision of the Ukrainian Administrative Court of Appeal (new window). “Representatives of these political forces relayed Russia's official position towards our country, supported anti-Ukrainian policies and posed a threat to Ukraine's national security”Ukrainian justice had argued.

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Among them, the “Opposition Platform-For Life”. The leading opposition party, with 44 of the 450 elected to the Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament, it was openly supported by Moscow. One of its founders, MP Viktor Medvedchuk (new window)a refugee in Moscow, even counts Vladimir Putin as his daughter's godfather. Accused of having participated in the invasion of Russia, he was arrested, tried and sentenced to prison at the start of the war. But there are no other examples of high-profile trials against political opponents, apart from a wave of arrests during the anti-corruption campaign launched in January 2023 by the Ukrainian government. On September 2, oligarch and former governor Igor Kolomoisky (new window) had, for example, been arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering. The other groups affected by a suspension were small, without any representative in the Rada.

We are therefore far from silencing the entire opposition. Especially since if the “Opposition Platform-For Life”, which came second in the last elections, has in fact been banned, the parties which came in third and fourth (“Pan-Ukrainian Union” and “European Solidarity”) are still assets.

An inaudible opposition internationally

The fact remains that three of these eleven parties benefited from significant support from the population. Together, they obtained 18% of the votes in the country's last legislative elections, in 2019. So what is the place of this opposition now? Internally, it is far from being muzzled. In the hemicycle, debates are free. As proof, discussions around a reform of the law on mobilization animated the entire country for many months. While the government and the army wanted to reform the criteria in order to hire up to 500,000 new recruits, the protest from elected officials had pushed the government to review its copy (new window). At the start of the week, a bill defended by Holos (new window) made it possible to grant a reprieve from military service to people whose loved ones died or disappeared on the front. Outside the chamber, in the press or their social networks, the two main opposition parties regularly criticize the government's action.

However, many voices actually regret the lack of visibility of this political sensitivity abroad. Thus, former President Petro Poroshenko, who has had terrible relations with his successor since the 2019 election, published a letter last February in which he complained of not receiving the necessary authorizations to leave Ukrainian territory. Addressed to European Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi, the letter signed by the elected representative of the European Solidarity party (new window) described the use “abusive of martial law and war” with the aim, according to him, of “cleanse the political field of the opposition and isolate it from the international scene”. Ditto on the side of the Holos party. In a column published on March 6 by the Kyiv Independent (new window)Yaroslav Zhelezniak accusait “the president's office and, apparently, Zelensky himself” to block the international travel of legislators “because of their vote on certain bills considered extremely important to the president”. And “real problem” for the “parliamentary diplomacy”, as described last March by Oleksandr Salizhenko, analyst from an NGO specializing in monitoring parliamentary life, in the pages of Monde (new window).

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In summary, it is false to say that Volodymyr Zelensky is muzzling the opposition. However, in recent months, a real question has arisen in the country regarding the lack of international visibility of the most protesting voices. Faced with a conflict that has lasted for more than 1000 days, the Ukrainian presidency obviously wants to keep the image of the first days intact. That of a country united in the face of the enemy.

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