Messages circulating on social media in the last few days claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is proposing a new law that makes criticising the president illegal. The claims are almost certainly Russian disinformation, but they are playing on legitimate fears that the Ukrainian president is concentrating more and more power in his own hands at a time when his popularity is starting to fade as the war with Russia moves towards its fourth year with no end in sight.

Zelenskiy is no longer the most popular politician in the country and his grip on power is weakening, The Spectator associate editor Owen Matthews said in a hard-hitting piece last week. This is not the first time that Zelenskiy has been accused of reverting to type and using the political tactics that are common outside of the EU in the Former Soviet Union (FSU).

He was roundly criticised for shutting down three opposition, albeit pro-Russian, television stations and banning the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life party, at the time the second biggest in parliament after the president’s own Servant of the People party. The authorities also eventually arrested the party’s leader Viktor Medvedchuk, who admittedly is a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s, who is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter.

Given there is a war going on, these actions are easy to justify. Medvedchuk tried to flee the country but was arrested before he was eventually included in a prisoner swap and now lives in luxury in Moscow. However, commentators are worried that whatever the justifications, these moves by Zelenskiy are undermining democracy and part of a wider trend. The Swiss Federal Intelligence Service concluded in a 2023 study that Zelenskiy is showing “authoritarian traits” especially in his fight with Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko, who has been a constant Zelenskiy-critic.

Similar accusations were made against Zelenskiy following his decision to fire former commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, after he overtook Zelenskiy in the popularity ratings, despite his obvious competence as the military commander-in-chief.

More recently in an interview Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s spy master and chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence, who is third in the popularity rankings after Zaluzhnyi and Zelenskiy, claimed that the president has tried to fire him nine times, but has been prevented by US pressure, due to his competence in his job.

And a Zaluzhnyi interview with Time Magazine put the cat amongst the pigeons in Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) after the general criticised the president's strategy and described the war as a stalemate. He was fired several months later and made ambassador to the UK. The article described widespread dissatisfaction with Zelenskiy's top-down style. The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, has also come in for frequent criticism for the Machiavellian grip he maintains on power, most recently in a profile by Politico.

And the Kremlin has constantly played on question marks over Zelenskiy's legitimacy, arguing that his five years in office expired in May and so under the Kremlin’s reading of the constitution, Zelenskiy is no longer the legitimate leader of the country and Rada speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk should have taken over.

This line is obvious Russian disinformation, as the constitution is crystal clear that presidential elections cannot be held as long as martial law is in effect. Zelenskiy has been a heroic wartime leader and rallied the citizens around the flag in Ukrainians' titanic struggle against Russian aggression. He won accolades with his “I don’t need a ride. I need ammo” comment after the US offered to evacuate him in the first week of the war, and his now legendary “We are all here” video post filmed on the street outside Bankova in the heart of Kyiv only a few days after the invasion began.

But as the war continues, fatigue is setting in. Last week Zelenskiy reshuffled his government, replacing the long-serving prime minister Denys Shmygal with the highly competent, but ultra-loyal, Yulia Svyrydenko, who cut a minerals deal with the Trump administration on April 30, in move that was also interpreted as Zelenskiy shoring up his grip on power.

Fading support, growing frustration

Bankova has taken tight control of the government’s media message. But the public have been growing increasingly tired of the endless upbeat state-propaganda, The Kyiv Independent reported at the start of last year.

Bankova has also shown itself to be tolerant of any media outlet that it believes is not loyal enough to the regime. In another scandal in January 2024, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) was caught spying on and intimidating Bihus.info, one of the country’s most prominent independent investigative journalism outlets.

Bihus.info released a statement alleging that members of the SBU had placed their journalists under surveillance, including video and audio recording of staff during private moments, some of which were later leaked online in a smear campaign. Videos of the staff drinking and smoking marijuana were used in an attempt to discredit the organisation, broadcast by pro-government or anonymous Telegram channels, suggesting coordinated targeting.

Bihus.info said the surveillance and subsequent smear campaign were retaliation for its investigations into government corruption, including reports involving powerful figures close to Zelenskiy. Among other scandals, Zelenskiy was forced to sack defence minister Oleksii Reznikov after the local press exposed a military procurement corruption scandal involving overpriced eggs and winter jackets.

A few months later Ukrainian investigative journalism outlet Slidstvo.Info said its journalist, Yevhenii Shulhat, appeared to be targeted by military enlistment officers as retaliation for his work investigating authorities, The Kyiv Independent reported.

More recently, prominent anti-corruption activist Vitaliy Shabunin, the co-founder and chair of the leading Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) NGO, has been accused of evading military service and fraud, in a move widely seen as politically motivated. He is known for his outspoken criticism of both pre-war governments and the current administration.

“Taking advantage of the war, Volodymyr Zelenskiy is taking the first but confident steps towards corrupt authoritarianism,” Shabunin posted on Telegram.

Drift into despotism?

Donald Trump’s “big announcement” on July 14 of new Patriot missile batteries for Ukraine, along with threats of punitive sanctions against Putin and quiet approval for strikes on Moscow, has thrown Kyiv a desperately needed lifeline, as the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) summer offensive grinds relentlessly on, albeit at enormous cost in the lives of men; reports claim that Russia is losing over 1,000 soldiers a day. But despite the military fillip, weapons alone may not be enough to prevent Ukraine from collapsing under the weight of its own political, social and military crisis, argues The Spectator’s Matthews.

Putin chose renewed escalation this spring based on advice from his generals and spies that Ukraine was on the verge of disintegration. Alarmingly, they may not be wrong, argues Matthews. Ukraine’s army is critically overstretched, its front-line forces exhausted, and its manpower depleted. The Kyiv Independent reported last week that the year-long battle for the key logistics hub town of Pokrovsk may be coming to an end and it could fall into Russian hands soon, in what would be a major strategic setback for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

“If the war continues soon there will be no Ukraine left to fight for,” one former senior official in Zelenskiy’s administration told Matthews. That official now accuses Zelenskiy of “prolonging the war to hold on to power.”

Despite extraordinary endurance, Ukrainian morale is faltering. “We are hanging over the abyss,” Mariia Berlinska, head of the Aerial Reconnaissance Support Centre told Matthews. “Ukraine is an expendable pawn in an American game… Trump, Putin, [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping will] spend us like small change if they need to.”

The fading hope of victory was reflected in a recent poll from the respected Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), which found the number of Ukrainians that believed Ukraine would be a “flourishing member of the EU in ten year’s time” has fallen from 88% in 2022 to 43% in June this year, and the larger part of society (47%) now believed that in a decade Ukraine will have “a ruined economy and a large outflow of people”. Another poll found that 70% of Ukrainians now believe their leaders are enriching themselves from the war. Corruption cases are a constant feature of the Zelenskiy administration and the US even sent a team of auditors into Kyiv in June to check how US financial support is being spent – a line item specifically including in last year’s $61bn Biden-backed aid package.

The state of emergency, originally meant to isolate pro-Russian oligarchs, is now being used to silence opposition and seize private property. “Ukraine has two enemies, two Vladimirs: Zelenskiy and Putin,” a former cabinet minister told The Spectator. “Putin is destroying Ukraine from [the] outside, but Zelenskiy is destroying it from within… The irony is that this Putinification of Ukraine is being funded by the West.”

Fuelling the growing dissatisfaction is the government’s aggressive compulsory conscription campaign, known as “busification” for the minivans that victims are bundled into by snatch squads. Social media is awash with videos of forced conscriptions. Desertion is also at epidemic proportions: over 230,000 cases have been opened since 2022, more than the active-duty militaries of Britain, France and Germany combined.

Soldiers serve indefinitely. Rotations or rest are not scheduled. A draft law that would have granted discharge after 36 months was shelved due to fears of mass personnel shortages. Members of the AFU are exhausted. New recruits or conscripts are delivered to the frontline with little training and most don’t last long, even if the AFU losses are a fraction of the AFR’s.

Both Zelenskiy and the Kremlin have suggested a fresh round of talks after the ceasefire negotiations stalled at the last meeting in Istanbul on June 3. However, progress is unlikely as the two sides are so far apart: Putin is insisting on no Nato for Ukraine and recognition of Russia’s sovereignty over the five occupied regions; Zelenskiy will not negotiate at all until a 30-day unconditional ceasefire is in place.

While the polls show the majority of Ukrainians still back Zelenskiy, and indeed, his popularity got a boost after Trump accused him of “having no cards” and “behaving undemocratically” during the shouting match between two presidents on February 28 in the Oval Office, he cannot keep the war up forever. Putin, for his part, continues to enjoy an approval rating of over 80% and patriotism in Russia is at an all-time high, despite the growing economic problems there.