The Russian political leadership badly misjudged the domestic political environment in Ukraine in February 2022. In contradistinction to its apt and aggressive reading of the ground-level Ukrainian political ecosystem in 2014, Russian intelligence failures in 2022 turned an attempted regime-change operation into a grinding regional war of attrition, with its political objectives forcibly downgraded and its military and economy both substantially degraded by the conflict.[1] Expectations that a sizeable portion of the country’s population were in favor of political decapitation in Kyiv; that a large number of state, military, and security officers were ready to defect or aid in Russian efforts; and that local politicians would be waiting in the wings with sufficient clout, legitimacy, and personal skill to lead post-occupation efforts proved to be wrong on all counts.
Western researchers, regional observers, and local analysts have largely pinned the blame on two primary faults on the Russian side: 1) the operational failure of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) to collect and properly digest accurate information about the state of the Ukrainian political system and the political-cultural disposition of the population; and 2) the unnaturally constrained information ecosystem and decision-making features of a personalist autocratic political regime in which there are strong disincentives to correcting misaligned and self-harming views at the top of the political system.[2] U.S. and other partner aid to Ukraine, as well as the country’s own preparations, have been noted as important elements to Ukraine’s successful resistance, as well.[3]
These lessons are instructive but of limited use to policymakers and political-military analysts in the United States and among its Western allies. While the prospect of intelligence failures will surely remain a perennial problem for all military-security bureaucratic apparatuses, the Russian case highlights a uniquely siloed internal information environment dominated by a single intelligence branch which does not map well onto the variegated, distributed, and bureaucratically-complex U.S. intelligence community.[4] The U.S. political regime is even more removed, although still ultimately relying on personal decision-making at the presidential level to green-light major military operations. Yet beneath that final decision-point is a vastly different incentive structure determined by domestic audience costs to a responsive electorate, a plural media environment, and an oligarchic matrix of economic, political, and international stakeholders that constraint individual executive initiative. All together, this precludes hyper-personalized and privatized decision-making.[5]
Instead, analysts should turn to a less-acknowledged contributor to Russia’s act of catastrophic political misjudgment which does bear directly on American decision-making processes—the danger of assumptions about a country’s domestic political dynamics under highly dynamic ideological change worldwide. The key error in Russian analysis of the Ukrainian polity was a belief that the political conditions of 2014 still held in 2022, and moreover that the same political geography and split elite orientation towards Russia remained as it had been a decade before. Put bluntly, in 2014, large segments of the Ukrainian population were substantively pro-Russian and mobilizable for political purposes. Many influential political and military-security elites at both the national and regional levels were actively interested in geopolitical rapprochement, and pro-Western Ukrainian nationalism was considerably weaker across society. Over the span of less than ten years, each of these assumptive elements were no longer true.[6]
Faulty assumptions about the ideological realities on the ground, at both the popular- and elite-level, are not unique to the Russian case, but can be widely applied to current geopolitical concerns that attract the attention of U.S. policymakers…
Faulty assumptions about the ideological realities on the ground, at both the popular- and elite-level, are not unique to the Russian case, but can be widely applied to current geopolitical concerns that attract the attention of U.S. policymakers, especially those which are hypothesized to potentially require future American military operations. Two cases stand out as areas where careful reassessments and hard, ideologically unpalatable nuances are needed: first, kinetic American involvement in a defense of Taiwan against military aggression by the People’s Republic of China, and second, potential ground intervention in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Less severe cases of potential political misjudgment, and more relevant to the interests of U.S. partners in Europe, include political interventions in Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia and NATO membership candidates such as Georgia and Moldova, as well as assumptions about ally interest in countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Political misjudgment across these varied problem-sets has the potential to mirror the Russian failure in Ukraine. The global shift away from the ideological expectations of the post-Cold War U.S.-backed liberal order, widely noted in the area-studies and social scientific communities, has led to greater doubts about inherent popular and elite support for Western norms in countries that may be targeted for crisis operations.[7] As late as the mid-2010s, policymakers could assume considerable support for democracy-promotion, political liberalization, and integration with U.S.-led international economic institutions. This provided a standard case for assumptions about the outcome of protest movements that constituted the Color Revolutions of the 2000s in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet Eurasia as well as the Arab Spring in the early 2010s.[8]
Yet this approach can no longer be assumed but must be demonstrated through careful and regular analytic reassessments. Taiwan hosts a considerable pro-PRC interest group at the elite level, which is also expressed in internal party politics.[9] The Iranian regime, while delegitimizing itself through repressions against conational protesters, continues to find recourse in strong religious traditionalism, influencing all levels of society. Any post-theocratic regime successor would easily muster anti-Western nationalism in the population and among moderate clerical and business elites.[10] Ideologically pro-Western views (i.e., those beyond simple geopolitical calculations) among Eastern European and Eurasian elites likely peaked in the 2010s, a function of a halting integration strategy by the EU and NATO, as well as local expressions of discontent with the increasingly left-progressive normative commitments by international institutions, Western-funded NGO complexes, and policymakers in both Brussels and Washington.[11] And civil society in the Arab world remains dominated by Western-skeptical religious and nationalist ideologies, juxtaposed against the liberal pro-Western elites in several countries that have supported renewed authoritarian rule in the wake of the 2010’s revolutionary chaos.[12]
The case of Russia’s failure in Ukraine to properly prepare, or even understand, the political groundwork for a major regime-change operation is thus instructive for Western policymakers. While the details and the extreme nature of the decision are quite different, the macro-level assumptions of a compliant, pro-operation constituency able and willing to support intervention remains relevant and applicable. U.S. and coalition experiences with shifting and antagonistic domestic political realities in Iraq and Afghanistan only further underlines the key insight that grave political misjudgment is not something that only happens to adversaries.[13]
The Case of Political Misjudgment in the Russo-Ukrainian War
Euromaidan protesters rally in Kyiv. (Nessa Gnatoush/Wikimedia)
The Russian failure to properly understand the domestic political situation in Ukraine is first and foremost a problem of intelligence-gathering and misapplied sociopolitical assumptions. The regime’s subsequent decision-making processes, given these inputs, followed to tremendously ill effect. As described in detail in both journalistic accounts and post hoc research observations, Russian military and political leadership assumed an operating environment akin to the one they found in 2014 at the end of the Euromaidan protests.[14] The FSB was the primary information corridor informing Kremlin discussions, but continued to propose solutions using the local elites whose star had fallen significantly since the annexation of Crimea, while the evaporation of a pro-Russian position in Ukrainian politics was never forthrightly acknowledged.[15]
The protest period and successful regime-change from a pro-Russian to a pro-Western government in 2013-2014 has often been (rightly) framed as a success of the Western democracy-promotion model interacting with genuine, grassroots domestic political support. But it can also be described as a successful use of pro-Russian assets at the elite- and popular-level to achieve modified Russian geopolitical goals, included the annexation of Crimea without significant armed struggle and the development of a major anti-government insurgency in the Donbas, which was supported, supplied, and partially led by Russian security forces.[16] Furthermore, Russian decision-makers took advantage of a unique period of state and regime weakness, through which an aggressive roll of the dice had an unusually decisive impact.[17]
Russian aims in 2014 were achieved with the help of considerable local support. This included political elites in Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea, who quickly pivoted from passive support for the pro-Russian Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych to a fully separatist position and ultimate integration into the Russian government’s ruling party, United Russia.[18] It also relied on broad, longstanding support in the Crimean population for a pro-Russian political orientation, as well as the rapid radicalization of pro-Russian opinion in Donbas and southeastern Ukrainian populations which led to significant political mobilization and then active support for insurgency by many Ukrainian citizens.[19] Although Russia saw the Ukrainian state removed from its geopolitical orbit after the 2014 events, key elites and sympathetic anti-Maidan segments of the southeastern Ukrainian public meant that separatist action was acquiesced to by many, if not outright supported by all.[20]
The political situation in non-occupied Ukraine in 2022 was decisively different, although the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that Russian intelligence and political analysts utterly failed to update their prior assumptions over the intervening years. By this time, the Ukrainian population found itself in an eight-year trench war with Russian-backed forces in the Donbas for which hundreds of thousands were called up over the period. Ukraine also experienced the loss of considerable territory to Russian aggrandizement, and had seen multiple elections in which forthright, pro-Western politicians had won huge parliamentary majorities and presidential victories. Pro-Russian sentiment was largely delegitimized by association with the conflict and had evolved into a pro-peace faction supported by far smaller segments of the Ukrainian population.[21] The most outspokenly pro-Russian parts of the electorate had been physically detached from Ukrainian politics due to annexation and occupation, changing the fundamental political geography of the polity. This should have been evident to analysts based on very simple, publicly-accessible data points such as the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections.[22] Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government had pushed forward, alongside civil society, with a sharp Ukrainianization policy and supported a sustained civic-nationalist ideological project that integrated the population into a symbolic repertoire of state sovereignty and national identity distinct from Soviet-era and pro-Russian identity legacies.[23]
Ukraine in 2022 was not without political turmoil, and counterfactual analysis of the elite situation just prior to the war (that is, sans intervention) suggests that the Zelensky administration was facing serious internal political challenges.[24] The most bullish case for Russian hopes at this point was that political fragmentation could have led to renewed openings for a pro-peace faction to gain in clout over time. Yet Russia embarked on an armed political decapitation strategy instead, assuming that discredited and marginal pro-Russian politicians such as the oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, the former, exiled president Viktor Yanukovych, or even the Ukrainian MP Yuri Boyko and his Opposition Platform party, might be able to act as a quisling government-in-waiting.[25] This simply did not reflect the political opportunity structure at the time, nor the nationalizing, anti-Russian sentiment that was now widespread among the population.
Viktor Medvedchuk, Viktor Yanukovych, and Yuri Boyko (Wikimedia and Encyclopedia Britannica)
Russian efforts to force a regime-change failed for many reasons, as ongoing research has suggested, ranging from bad strategic design and poor operational/logistical planning to force-structure misalignment with military goals, bad operational execution, and insufficiently prepared ground troop psychology. But it also suffered from a fundamental issue of political misjudgment—a fantasy portrayal of what cadres of Ukrainian elites were available to pursue Russian goals and what constituted the actual sentiment and political orientation of the wider population. This experience holds extrapolatable lessons far beyond the case itself.
Political Misjudgment Applied
Ultimately, U.S. and allied policymakers can take several useful lessons from the disastrous Russian political misjudgment in Ukraine. First, they must recognize that the problem of inferring the political orientation of local elites and populations cannot be based on prior experiences without significant attention paid towards updating priors. FSB analysts and Russian governmental elites continued to believe that the facts on the ground fit the 2014 problem-set, despite tremendous, and post hoc quite obvious, changes.
Second, policymakers must be prepared to accept that local actors may not see events in the same ideological lens that decision-makers in Washington do—and that alignment on said issues can change significantly over time. While Vladimir Putin became increasingly obsessed with the idea of a triune East Slavic people divided by arbitrary, Soviet-era borders, Ukrainians had increasingly solidified towards a separate, sovereign conception of nationhood reinforced by experience in an antagonistic war with Russian-backed separatists and undergirded by an extensive, state-directed nationalization program.
Finally, decision-makers must spend time and effort in ensuring that their information flows from intelligence and area-analysts are as removed from just-so stories of easy local compliance and assumptions of popular, welcoming sentiment as possible. FSB reports that did suggest problems in the Ukrainian domestic political sphere are reported to have been packaged through several layers of rewrites and systematic re-framings to ensure that positive news was conveyed readily, while detrimental information was easily dismissible at the top. Given the extreme outcomes of a major kinetic operation gone awry due to political misjudgment, alongside significant military incompetence, policymakers would be wise to keep these meta-lessons ever present in mind.
Julian G. Waller is an Associate Research Analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses and a Professorial Lecturer in Political Science at George Washington University. His research areas include authoritarian politics, illiberal ideological dynamics, and Russian strategic decision-making and political-military affairs. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those his employers or affiliated institutions.
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Header Image: The Kremlin, Moscow, 2022 (Dmitry Ant).
Notes:
[1] Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi et al., “Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022,” RUSI Special Report (London, UK: Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), November 30, 2022), https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-conventional-warfighting-russias-invasion-ukraine-february-july-2022; Rob Lee and Michael Kofman, “How the Battle for the Donbas Shaped Ukraine’s Success,” Research Article (Philadelphia, PA: Foreign Policy Research Institute, December 23, 2022), https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/12/how-the-battle-for-the-donbas-shaped-ukraines-success/; Michael Kofman and Rob Lee, “Not Built for Purpose: The Russian Military’s Ill-Fated Force Design,” War on the Rocks, June 2, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/06/not-built-for-purpose-the-russian-militarys-ill-fated-force-design/.
[2] Julian G. Waller, “Putin’s Agency and the Decision for War,” RIDDLE Russia, May 2023, https://ridl.io/putin-s-agency-and-the-decision-for-war/; Erica Frantz and Andrea Kendall-Taylor, “Personalist Strongmen: Challenges and Trends,” Democracy Paradox, February 6, 2023, https://democracyparadox.com/2023/02/06/personalist-strongmen-challenges-and-trends/; Zabrodskyi et al., “Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine”; Julian G. Waller, “Problems With Russia’s Political Prepwork in the Russo-Ukrainian War,” The National Interest, March 25, 2022, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/problems-russia%E2%80%99s-political-prepwork-russo-ukrainian-war-201400; Ivan Gomza, “The War in Ukraine: Putin’s Inevitable Invasion,” Journal of Democracy 33, no. 3 (2022): 23–30, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0036; Jeffrey Edmonds, “Start with the Political: Explaining Russia’s Bungled Invasion of Ukraine,” War on the Rocks, April 28, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/start-with-the-political-explaining-russias-bungled-invasion-of-ukraine/.
[3] Zach Dorfman, “Exclusive: Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian invasion,” Yahoo!news, March 16, 2022, https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-secret-cia-training-program-in-ukraine-helped-kyiv-prepare-for-russian-invasion-090052743.html
[4] Roger Z. George and Harvey Rishikof, The National Security Enterprise: Navigating the Labyrinth (Georgetown University Press, 2017); Andrei Soldatov and Michael Rochlitz, “The Siloviki in Russian Politics,” in The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia, ed. Daniel Treisman (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 2018), 88–108; Ulf Walther, “Russia’s Failed Transformation: The Power of the KGB/FSB from Gorbachev to Putin,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 27, no. 4 (December 1, 2014): 666–86, https://doi.org/10.1080/08850607.2014.924808.
[5] Daniel W. Drezner, “Present at the Destruction: The Trump Administration and the Foreign Policy Bureaucracy,” The Journal of Politics 81, no. 2 (April 2019): 723–30, https://doi.org/10.1086/702230; Steven B. Redd and Alex Mintz, “Policy Perspectives on National Security and Foreign Policy Decision Making,” Policy Studies Journal 41, no. 1 (2013): 11-S37, https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12010; Alex Mintz and Karl DeRouen Jr., Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
[6] Yuri M. Zhukov, “Trading Hard Hats for Combat Helmets: The Economics of Rebellion in Eastern Ukraine,” Journal of Comparative Economics, Ukraine\: Escape from Post-Soviet Legacy, 44, no. 1 (February 1, 2016): 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2015.10.010; Joanna Szostek, “Russia and the News Media in Ukraine: A Case of ‘Soft Power’?,” East European Politics & Societies and Cultures 28, no. 3 (2014): 463–86, https://doi.org/10.1177/0888325414537297.
[7] Alexander Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon, “The Real Crisis of Global Order: Illiberalism on the Rise,” Foreign Affairs 101 (February 2022): 103; Constance Duncombe and Tim Dunne, “After Liberal World Order,” International Affairs 94, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 25–42, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iix234.
[8] Eva Bellin, “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring,” Comparative Politics 44, no. 2 (2012): 127–49; Valerie J. Bunce and Sharon L. Wolchik, Defeating Authoritarian Leaders in Postcommunist Countries, Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511977404.
[9] Christina Lai, “More than Carrots and Sticks: Economic Statecraft and Coercion in China–Taiwan Relations from 2000 to 2019,” Politics 42, no. 3 (August 1, 2022): 410–25, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395720962654; Rachel Oswald, “Unique Political Fault Lines in Taiwan Complicate China Resistance,” Roll Call, October 11, 2022, https://www.rollcall.com/2022/10/11/unique-political-fault-lines-in-taiwan-complicate-china-resistance/; Chieh Yen, “Why Taiwan’s Main Opposition Party Can’t Shake Its Pro-China Stance,” January 18, 2023, https://thediplomat.com/2023/01/why-taiwans-main-opposition-party-cant-shake-its-pro-china-stance/.
[10] Kourosh Rahimkhani, “Political Opposition and Voter Mobilization in an Authoritarian State: The Case of Parliamentary Elections in Iran,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 0, no. 0 (December 8, 2022): 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2022.2141687; Güneş Murat Tezcür, “Democracy Promotion, Authoritarian Resiliency, and Political Unrest in Iran,” Democratization 19, no. 1 (February 1, 2012): 120–40, https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2012.641296.
[11] Leonie Holthaus and Jonas Wolff, “Practices of Policy Orientation: A Study of the Heterogeneous Field of Democracy Promotion Research,” International Studies Review 25, no. 1 (March 1, 2023): viac062, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viac062; Thomas Carothers, “The Backlash Against Democracy Promotion,” April 7, 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2006-03-01/backlash-against-democracy-promotion.
[12] Inmaculada Szmolka, “Liberal-Secular Parties in Arab Political Systems,” in Routledge Handbook on Political Parties in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge, 2020); Dalia F. Fahmy and Daanish Faruqi, Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (Simon and Schuster, 2017).
[13] Theo Farrell, “Military Adaptation and Organisational Convergence in War: Insurgents and International Forces in Afghanistan,” Journal of Strategic Studies 45, no. 5 (July 29, 2022): 718–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2020.1768371; Zach Dorfman, “CIA applies lessons from Iraq 'debacle' in information battle over Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Yahoo!news, March 23, 2022, https://news.yahoo.com/cia-applies-lessons-from-iraq-debacle-in-information-battle-over-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-090001168.html; Robert Jervis, “Reports, Politics, and Intelligence Failures: The Case of Iraq,” Journal of Strategic Studies 29, no. 1 (February 1, 2006): 3–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390600566282; Andrew Calabrese, “Casus Belli: U.S. Media and the Justification of the Iraq War,” Television & New Media 6, no. 2 (May 1, 2005): 153–75, https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476404273952.
[14] David V. Gioe and Marina Miron, Putin Should Have Known His Invasion Would Fail, Foreign Policy Magazine, February 24, 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/24/ukraine-russia-putin-war-invasion-military-failure/; Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi et al., “Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022,” RUSI Special Report (London, UK: Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), November 30, 2022), https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/preliminary-lessons-conventional-warfighting-russias-invasion-ukraine-february-july-2022; Greg Miller and Catherine Belton, “Russia’s spies misread Ukraine and misled Kremlin as war loomed,” August 19, 2022, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/russia-fsb-intelligence-ukraine-war/;
[15] Ilya Zhegulev, “How Putin Came to Hate Ukraine” [КАК ПУТИН ВОЗНЕНАВИДЕЛ УКРАИНУ], Vyorstka, April 25, 2023, https://verstka.media/kak-putin-pridumal-voynu; Igor Burdyga, “The rise and fall of Putin’s man in Ukraine,” openDemocracy, July 2022, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/medvedchuk-putin-poroshenko-treason-ukraine-russia/.
[16] Martin Laryš and Emil A. Souleimanov, “Delegated Rebellions as an Unwanted Byproduct of Subnational Elites’ Miscalculation: A Case Study of the Donbas,” Problems of Post-Communism 69, no. 2 (March 4, 2022): 155–65, https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1943449; Tor Bukkvoll, “Fighting on Behalf of the State—the Issue of pro-Government Militia Autonomy in the Donbas War,” Post-Soviet Affairs 0, no. 0 (May 10, 2019): 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2019.1615810.
[17] Adam Charles Lenton, “Why Didn’t Ukraine Fight for Crimea? Evidence from Declassified National Security and Defense Council Proceedings,” Problems of Post-Communism 69, no. 2 (March 4, 2022): 145–54, https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2021.1901595; Daniel Treisman, ed., The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 2018).
[18] Kimitaka Matsuzato, “Domestic Politics in Crimea, 2009-2015,” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 24, no. 2 (2016): 225–56.
[19] Lenton, “Why Didn’t Ukraine Fight for Crimea?”; Bukkvoll, “Fighting on Behalf of the State—the Issue of pro-Government Militia Autonomy in the Donbas War”; Gwendolyn Sasse and Alice Lackner, “War and Identity: The Case of the Donbas in Ukraine,” Post-Soviet Affairs 34, no. 2–3 (May 4, 2018): 139–57, https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2018.1452209.
[20] Quentin Buckholz, “The Dogs That Didn’t Bark: Elite Preferences and the Failure of Separatism in Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk,” Problems of Post-Communism 66, no. 3 (2019): 151–60, https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2017.1367256; Elise Giuliano, “Who Supported Separatism in Donbas? Ethnicity and Popular Opinion at the Start of the Ukraine Crisis,” Post-Soviet Affairs 34, no. 2–3 (May 4, 2018): 158–78, https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2018.1447769.
[21] Atsushi Ogushi, “The Opposition Bloc in Ukraine: A Clientelistic Party with Diminished Administrative Resources,” Europe-Asia Studies 72, no. 10 (November 25, 2020): 1639–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2020.1770701.
[22] Paul D’Anieri, “Ukraine’s 2019 Elections: Pro-Russian Parties and The Impact of Occupation,” Europe-Asia Studies 74, no. 10 (November 26, 2022): 1915–36, https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2022.2117793.
[23] Olga Onuch and Henry E. Hale, The Zelensky Effect (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023).
[24] Jessica Pisano, “How Zelensky Has Changed Ukraine,” Journal of Democracy 33, no. 3 (2022): 5–13, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0034; Sławomir Matuszak and Tadeusz Iwański, “Zelensky vs. Akhmetov – a Test of Strength,” OSW Commentary, December 2021, https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2021-12-22/zelensky-vs-akhmetov-a-test-strength; Mykhailo Minakov, “Waiting for the Storm? Ukraine’s Political Situation before the Autumn of 2021,” Wilson Center - Kennan Institute, Focus Ukraine (blog), September 2, 2021, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/waiting-storm-ukraines-political-situation-autumn-2021; Sławomir Matuszak, “Zelensky’s Ukraine: The Mechanisms of Power Are Failing,” OSW Commentary, January 2021, https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2021-01-22/zelenskys-ukraine-mechanisms-power-are-failing.
[25] Roman Kravets and Roman Romaniuk, “Kremlin’s Two Plans. Who Would Govern Ukraine If Kyiv Fell,” trans. Myroslava Zavadska, Anton Strii, and Olya Loza, Yahoo News, March 5, 2023, https://news.yahoo.com/kremlins-two-plans-govern-ukraine-163000977.html; Igor Burdyga, “These Are the Men Russia Wanted to Put in Charge of Ukraine,” OpenDemocracy, March 4, 2023, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-opposition-platform-for-life-medvedchuk-boiko/.