Like Leonid Kuchma 25 years earlier, newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his first official foreign visit to Canada. Unlike Kuchma’s five-day visit in October 1994, which included stopovers in Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg, Mr. Zelenskyy came only to Toronto on July 1-3 and that was to participate in the third annual Ukraine Reform Conference, the first two having been held in London and Copenhagen.
Also, unlike President Kuchma, who participated in several public events with the diaspora, during his visit, President Zelenskyy was able to hold only one meeting with a delegation of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress led by UCC National President Alexandra Chyczij, as well as engage in some individual conversations with Ukrainian Canadian community leaders during a dinner for him hosted by Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
But like Mr. Kuchma, who appeared visibly moved during a rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem by 900 students of the Ukrainian Bilingual Program in Edmonton, Mr. Zelenskyy too was profoundly impressed by the dynamism of the Ukrainian community in Canada.
“I believe that his wife, in seeing her reaction, was rather overwhelmed by, and I think he (himself) was very impressed by the calibre of the diaspora and not only the calibre of the diaspora but the sort of influence that the diaspora has with the Canadian government,” says Andriy Hladyshevsky, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko.
“It was pretty clear to him – and he was all eyes and ears – that the government views the Ukrainian Canadian community as a player in the country… and government leaders and other parties know that the Ukrainian community has to be seriously engaged if they’re going to succeed in Canada. That was not lost on him at all and I think from that perspective that some of his comments, and sidebar comments a few of us that were able to speak to him briefly, was that he understood how much Ukrainians contributed to the country and how much the country depends on those Ukrainian Canadians in its day-to-day affairs. I think, for him, coming to Canada was a good place to start because obviously, in other countries that he will visit, the diaspora will be strong, but not as strong as it is in Canada where the Ukrainian community is so influential,” he added.
Ihor Michalchyshyn, executive director of the UCC, echoed those sentiments, adding that he heard the same from other people. “I think he was impressed by the depth of our culture and all the rest that we do here,” he stated.
Both Mr. Michalchyshyn and Mr. Hladyshevsky were impressed by Mr. Zelenskyy’s own abilities. “He’s a very good communicator, he was very well received with whomever he met and was very personable and very engaging,” said Mr. Michalchyshyn. Mr. Hladyshevsky described him as an “incredibly smart man, incredibly witty. He catches the spirit of a room very quickly and he is very smooth.”
At the meeting with Mr. Zelenskyy, the UCC delegation discussed the activities and work of the Ukrainian Canadian community and described the priorities of the UCC in relations with Ukraine.
UCC President Chyczij congratulated President Zelenskyy on his election victory, and stressed that the Ukrainian Canadian community will continue to offer strong support to Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression; support Ukraine’s continued NATO and European Union integration and reform efforts; and support the development of the Ukrainian language as the sole state language.
“We are pleased to see the president voice support for Ukraine’s further path to integration with the West and the development of the Ukrainian language. We will continue to work with Ukraine on these goals and priorities. We thank President Zelenskyy for the opportunity to have a constructive dialogue and look forward to a broader community meeting on President Zelenskyy’s next visit to Canada,” she stated.
But one of the UCC’s largest constituents, the League of Ukrainian Canadians, expressed serious reservations about Mr. Zelenskyy following the meeting. Their particular concerns were that “during his trip, President Zelenskyy made scant reference to Russia’s designs on Ukraine, even to identify Russia as the aggressor country.”
“His reluctance to state his administration’s national security and defense policies, including his position on pending legislation to reform the defense and security sectors is no less disturbing… We also are deeply concerned about President Zelenskyy’s reluctance to speak clearly about his administration’s commitment to restore Ukrainian sovereignty in Donbas and Crimea on Ukrainian terms,” stated LUC President Roman Medyk and Managing Director Orest Steciw in a July 5 release.
What also disturbed them was “that we did not hear from the new president a commitment to complete the goals set out by the Revolution of Dignity. Instead, at the events in Toronto we heard high-ranking foreign government officials from Europe, the U.S., and Canada make more references to the goals and achievements of the Revolution of Dignity than President Zelenskyy or his delegation.”
Mr. Zelenskyy himself added fuel to this fire six days later when he proposed to extend the lustration law preventing officials from the Yanukovych regime from holding public office to include those who held office since the Revolution of Dignity. This was condemned not only by the diaspora, but by all G-7 ambassadors to Ukraine, who stated on the following day: “Electoral change and political rotation are the norm in democracy. Indiscriminate bans on all participants in executive and legislative governance are not. Since 2014, we have been appreciative of reform progress achieved in some important areas. While it is right to hold those guilty of abusing their office to account, the situation in Ukraine today is, in our conviction, not comparable to that after the Revolution of Dignity.”
On July 21, however, Mr. Zelenskyy followed up his unprecedented landslide presidential victory with an unprecedented absolute parliamentary majority in Ukraine’s parliamentary elections. Undoubtedly, the majority his Servant of the People party enjoys will be strengthened even more as those national deputies elected as independents in single-mandate constituencies will flock to the gravy train as they have done in the past.
This will leave Mr. Zelenskyy with a greater mandate than any president has had in the history of independent Ukraine. While that may allow him to implement sweeping reforms, such a concentration of power can be worrisome.