President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's links to the Party of Regions lead to a trail of breadcrumbs that ends in the American capital.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s success in the first round of Ukraine’s presidential elections shares many factors in common with Donald Trump’s victory in the United States. Yet the differences between the two might matter more than the similarities.

Many of Ukraine’s presidential candidates systematically lie about their support for reforms and European integration. Finding the real reformer is hard – but urgent if Ukraine is to break the cycle of corruption and Russian aggression.

As the Ukrainian presidential elections approach later this month, many political scientists are talking about the shocking popularity of comedian-candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy. But perhaps they should also spend more time discussing the negative aspects of the candidate and the struggles his potential election could bring to Ukraine.

A recent panel in Brussels gave five Ukrainian presidential candidates the opportunity for a surrogate to give a speech on behalf of their campaign. Most of them were utterly deceptive, simply lying, rejecting the firm positions of their candidates to tell the European audience what they wanted to hear. Such deception reveals a troubling future for Ukraine if one of these anti-Western populists takes the presidency.

Yulia Tymoshenko began her election campaign first among candidates and has, according to estimates by different Ukrainian NGO’s, spent the most on it. Tymoshenko was in the lead in every opinion poll until February and she has a good chance to be elected president in the second round of the elections in the third week of April.

Viktor Yushchenko's former minister of defence and his bid for the 2019 elections.

Portraying Ukraine as unstable and on the verge of greater instability has been raised by realist scholars since the early 1990s and continues to dominate much of the pro-Putin western critics of Ukraine and realists writing in the West on the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Yulia Tymoshenko’s presidential campaign did not benefit from her December Washington visit, despite the millions spent on political consultants and lobbyists. In fact, she returned to Kyiv having created a worse image of herself in Washington, with local experts left wondering how she could ever hope to work with President Trump and Republicans if she was elected. 

Yulia Tymoshenko's bid for the presidency in Ukraine now includes promises of revisiting an ineffective treaty.

As Moscow warns of repercussions, Kyiv finally rejoices with the good tidings from a tense synod.

Many Ukrainian political movements claim they are working towards European integration and supporting reforms. The only way to verify this is to look at how they vote.