“Why Do So Few Presidential Candida-tes Support NATO and EU Member-ship?” by Taras Kuzio, Ukraine Alert blog, Atlantic Council, March 4 (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/why-do-so-few-presidential-candidates-support-nato-and-eu-membership):
Out of 42 candidates who are running for president in the Ukrainian elections on March 31, only 11 support NATO and EU membership. This represents a lower proportion of supporters than the over 300 deputies who voted on three occasions to change the Constitution to include those two goals. Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party and the Radical party voted for those constitutional changes, but neither Yulia Tymoshenko nor Oleh Lyashko – who lead these parties, respectively – include NATO and the EU in their election programs. …
Of those 11 candidates, President Petro Poroshenko is the most unequivocal in giving his support to NATO and EU membership. … Tymoshenko only mentions NATO once, within the context of modernizing Ukraine’s army. … Front-runner Volodymyr Zelensky provides a confusing list of priorities. While ignoring the EU, his election program states, “The movement of Ukraine to NATO and other security associations is a guarantee of our security, which I believe in and which should receive confirmation through an all-Ukrainian referendum.” The only other “security association” besides NATO is the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (also known as the Tashkent Treaty). …
…Populism dominates …including [the candidates’] foreign policies, because rather than prioritizing the country’s national interest of joining the EU and NATO, they seek to win votes by campaigning in “opposition” to Poroshenko. …