Авторы публикации
May 27, 2025
Ruslan Bortnik, Research Fellow , HIIA, "Kiev realist" ( Huzii Vitalii )
B AT TLE OF PRESIDENTS: V OL OD YMYR ZELENSK Y VS. PETR O POR OSHENK O
The relationship between the current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, has never been neutral—or mutually respectful. Despite minimal ideological differences, their relationship is defined by mutual distrust, shaped by past rejections, media influence, and power struggles. The rivalry persisted through legal confrontations, manipulation of the Constitutional Court, and shifting alliances with oligarchic and foreign interests. Although Poroshenko’s public support remains limited, his enduring influence among elites and his alignment with Western circles keep him a persistent political threat. The outcome reflects a broader struggle over Ukraine’s identity, governance, and geopolitical alignment amid ongoing war and internal instability.
ORIGINS OF THE ZELENSKY–POROSHENKO RIVALRY
The relationship between the current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, has never been neutral—or mutually respectful. The origin of the rivalry between them dates back to 2014, the year Petro Poroshenko assumed the presidency. During the process of forming his political team, Poroshenko invited the then well-known showman Volodymyr Zelensky to a meeting. According to Zelensky, Poroshenko offered him a place in his parliamentary team and powers in the field of media industry development in Ukraine. Zelensky declined, reportedly expressing interest in first gaining power within his own sphere and only later—if Poroshenko’s party succeeded—joining it. Poroshenko made the offer again, which Zelensky again refused. This set the tone for mutual caution and distrust.
The second turning point in the relationship was the acute phase of the conflict between Poroshenko and the well-known Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. On March 19, 2015, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a law lowering the quorum required for general shareholder meetings from 60 percent to 50 percent plus one share. It was aimed at minimizing Kolomoisky’s influence over the Ukrnafta company, in which the state held a stake of 50 percent plus one share and Kolomoisky’s structures held a 42 percent stake. The conflict led to Kolomoisky’s resignation as head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration five days later on March 24. The climax of the rivalry came on December 18, 2016, with the nationalization of PrivatBank, in which Kolomoisky and his partners held as much as 92 percent of shares.
The conflict indirectly affected the relationship between Poroshenko and Zelensky. Since 2012, Zelensky’s media company, Kvartal 95 Studio, had operated on Kolomoisky’s television channel, 1+1. The channel not only supported the Kvartal team to boost ratings but also viewed it as a powerful tool of political influence, particularly as an effective means of discrediting political and economic opponents through public satire. The Kvartal team became famous for its sharp satirical criticism of each Ukrainian administration—from the Yushchenko administration to perhaps even that of Zelensky himself. Altogether, this resulted in dozens of harsh and electorally impactful sketches of Petro Poroshenko starting in 2014 and intensifying throughout 2015 and 2016.
At the same time, in 2015, the Servant of the People television series began to air, with then-comedian Zelensky playing the role of the president of Ukraine. Many consider this the real start of his political public relations campaign, although it was not obvious at the time.
THE 2019 PRESIDENTIAL RACE
Zelensky openly announced his presidential ambitions in his New Year’s address on the night of December 31, 2018, after which he immediately became a target for journalists and experts from Poroshenko’s camp. To the personal animosity between Poroshenko and Zelensky was added the factor of a political struggle for power. Initially, though, Poroshenko’s campaign was built primarily around confronting Yulia Tymoshenko, and Zelensky was considered a “third- tier” candidate whose real goal was to collect enough votes to later build a parliamentary project. Zelensky, however, took first place in the second round of elections despite the expectations of Poroshenko’s team, which made him Poroshenko’s biggest opponent and dramatically intensified the political struggle.
Poroshenko’s campaign was even less successful in the second round of elections than in the first. It threatened voters with a “Russian comeback” allegedly personified by Zelensky while depicting his supporters as fools and Zelensky himself as either a drug addict or Kolomoisky’s puppet. This only increased the disgust towards Poroshenko, especially from Zelensky and his team.
One of the main tactics used against Zelensky was to force him into as many face-to-face debates with Poroshenko as possible, banking on his inexperience. This was a miscalculation, as Zelensky won his first and only debate against Poroshenko at the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv on April 19, 2019—just two days before the second round. Contrary to Poroshenko’s expectations, Zelensky was the absolute dominant figure both in terms of delivery (thanks to his acting experience) and content, skillfully playing the role of the opposition and blaming Poroshenko for the state of the country over the last five years, including the corruption, the war in Donbas, and the loss of Crimea. The debate amounted to an unprecedented public humiliation for Poroshenko, striking a blow not only to his ambitions but also his ego.
POROSHENKO IN THE OPPOSITION
After his crushing defeat, Poroshenko focused on consolidating his role as the main opposition leader, not only waiting for the new government to make mistakes and organizing political sabotage but also trying to complicate any criminal prosecution of him and his allies. To this end, Poroshenko transformed himself into an ethno-nationalist and staunch anti-Russian patriot.
This intensified ahead of the 2019 election with the creation of an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the adoption of the Law on the Functioning of Ukrainian as the State Language in second reading after his defeat. The essence of the new law was the gradual displacement of all non-Ukrainian languages from all spheres of public life in Ukraine. Poroshenko hoped it would not only unite nationalist segments of Ukrainian society around him but also create tension for Zelensky’s administration. A small part of Zelensky’s electorate and
nationalist activists supported the language law, but most of his voters opposed it, which put President Zelensky in an electoral zugzwang.
Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party and activists close to it played a key role in sabotaging Zelensky’s peace efforts under the Minsk agreements through protests and media campaigns in loyal outlets. Throughout 2019 and 2020, Zelensky attempted to implement what Poroshenko had composed and signed between 2014 and 2015 and had called a diplomatic success at the time. But once in opposition, Poroshenko labeled these agreements capitulation. The paradox is that such obvious lies and manipulation aroused no suspicion among Poroshenko’s supporters. Peaceful initiatives were blocked by mass campaigns like the “No to Capitulation” campaign, possibly driven by pro-Poroshenko networks.
Zelensky’s attempts throughout 2019 and 2020 to revise the humanitarian policies, foreign policy direction, and approaches to war and peace of his predecessor were labeled as pro-Russian by Poroshenko’s camp. The attacks were part of a strategy to mobilize mass protests against Zelensky and potentially overthrow him—just as Poroshenko had come to power via the Maidan Uprising that began in 2013. Understandably, the possibility of a new Maidan deeply concerned Zelensky’s team, especially in the early months, when many positions in security and military agencies were still held by Poroshenko’s appointees skeptical of peace deals with Russia.
This significantly influenced Zelensky’s ideology and politics. The defining moment came in February 2021, when Zelensky’s government decided to shut down television channels linked to a pro-Russian political party, Opposition Platform — For Life (OPZZh), marking the beginning of a crackdown on the so- called “white-blue” political camp partially skeptical of the West and partially pro-Russian, which continued after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Zelensky’s team also reversed its efforts to implement the Minsk agreements, toughened rhetoric on NATO integration, intensified the glorification of the Maidan, abandoned campaign promises of a liberal humanitarian policy, and expanded language reform and religious restructuring. By co-opting Poroshenko’s ideological agenda, Zelensky managed to neutralize him as a threat but simultaneously legitimized Poroshenko’s political platform.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
It is widely believed that from the fall of 2020, influence groups of Kolomoisky, Poroshenko, and Viktor Medvedchuk, the leader of the OPZZ and Putin’s confidant, began to use their leverage over the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (CCU) to undermine Zelensky’s authority. The three oligarchic clans sought to block the functioning of a number of critically important laws under Zelensky’s government. The laws repealed included the land market law, Article 366-1 of the Criminal Code establishing criminal liability for public officials who fail to provide asset declarations or provide false declarations, the law against illegal enrichment, and the “anti-Kolomoisky” law prohibiting the return of nationalized banks to their previous owners. The language law adopted in April 2019 was also repealed. This led to a sharp aggravation of relations between Volodymyr Zelensky and other political players in Ukraine, including Petro Poroshenko.
Medvedchuk’s team allegedly pursued the goal of depriving Ukraine of Western support and increasing its vulnerability to Russian influence, Kolomoisky and his entourage wanted to achieve the return of PrivatBank to their ownership, and Poroshenko to mobilize his voters and increase the anger towards Bankova in the form of a reaction to the reversal of the language law. In addition, all were united by one overriding common goal: the desire to undermine trust in President Zelensky inside Ukraine and in the West in order to generate a political crisis in Ukraine, which would result in the announcement of early elections, decrease the power of Zelensky and his team, and allow the three to increase their power. This succeeded to an extent—by the fall of 2020, polls showed that the level of support for Zelensky and his Servant of the People party was much lower than in the spring or summer.
The Office of the President reacted by accelerating its attacks on the media and economic assets of Medvedchuk clan, including through the National Security and Defense Council decisions in February and March of 2021 to shut down television channels and nationalize the private oil pipeline owned by the structures of Medvedchuk. This weakened the influence of the OPZZ, including its influence over the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. Zelensky’s team also continued its criminal prosecution of Poroshenko, which significantly reduced his influence over the Constitutional Court and the broader political system.
CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF POROSHENKO
Starting in 2019, criminal investigations against Poroshenko were actively carried out, and dozens of cases were opened. In two of the cases, official allegations were made. The first, made in June 2020, concerned Poroshenko’s alleged pressure on the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Serhiy Semochko, in July 2018. The second, in December 2021, concerned high treason in the form of financing terrorism through the supply of coal from the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine known as the “LDNR” territories to a Ukrainian company.
Viktor Medvedchuk was also a suspect in the second case, which served as the basis for the Ukrainian government’s imposition of sanctions against Poroshenko in February 2025, freezing his assets and creating significant obstacles to future political campaigns. Despite the dramatic tone, the investigation stalled by the time the full-scale Russian invasion began and was essentially frozen after February 24, 2022, briefly resuming only on February 12, 2025, when the sanctions were formally enacted.
The longer the investigations continued, the clearer it became that Ukrainian authorities were either unable or unwilling to jail Poroshenko, fearing political destabilization and a negative reaction from Western partners. Yet until 2022 and again in 2025, these legal cases were used to exert political pressure and discredit him.
WAR INSIDE AND OUT AFTER THE FULL-SCALE RUSSIAN INVASION
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 essentially neutralized the public confrontation between Zelensky and Poroshenko for some time. Several factors contributed, including the official suspension of elections under martial law, the unifying effect of the existential threat of the war, particularly in 2022, and Zelensky’s sky-high ratings in 2022 fueled by military successes and unprecedented Western support. Zelensky’s team no longer saw the need to discredit Poroshenko.
For Poroshenko, public criticism of Zelensky was unpromising and further weakened his status as a serious opposition figure, although he nevertheless continued to act behind the scenes, particularly in communications with U.S. and EU elites.
The change of administration in the United States after the presidential election
resulted in a change in the U.S. approach to the Russian-Ukrainian war: There was a sharp increase in pressure regarding the need to end the war. The shift increased the sense of crisis in Ukraine, and the most obvious mechanism for ending it is holding presidential and parliamentary elections. Elections were supposed to be held in 2024 but could not be due to the ongoing war and the Law of Ukraine’s ban on holding elections while under martial law. This exacerbated the confrontation between the Ukrainian political elites, including Zelensky and Poroshenko. The weakening support for Petro Poroshenko among the liberal Western elite and simultaneous attempts to establish contact with the new U.S. administration may have further aggravated the situation.
This resulted in systemic rhetorical campaigns against Petro Poroshenko and eventually political action. On January 30, 2025, the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Rules of Procedure supported barring Poroshenko, the leader of the European Solidarity faction, from participating in the sessions of the parliament. The initiative was put forward by representatives of the Servant of the People party who accused him of insulting People’s Deputy Bohdan Yaremenko. The leadership of the parliament also repeatedly refused Poroshenko permission to travel abroad to participate in official events and conferences including the Munich Security Conference.
On February 12, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine published a decision on the introduction of sanctions against Poroshenko—as well as several oligarchs and other individuals including Ihor Kolomoisky, Gennadiy Bogolyubov, Kostyantyn Zhevago, and Viktor Medvedchuk— limiting their rights to manage their assets and conduct economic and political activities. At the same time, all the property of his son, Oleksiy, was seized because of non-payment of a fine issued for repeatedly ignoring mobilization summonses. Numerous investigations into Poroshenko’s entourage are also ongoing, with accusations of possible Russian financing of the 2019 elections being particularly dangerous.
The negotiations between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky gave the opposition, including Petro Poroshenko, a reason to criticize the government regarding possible Ukrainian concessions. His party demanded that Zelensky provide a report on the negotiations with the United States on the settlement of the conflict with Russia, emphasizing the need for transparency and the consideration of Ukraine’s interests in international agreements. Poroshenko also called the mineral deal a threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty and called on the president to hold an urgent meeting with the heads of the
parliamentary factions to discuss this issue. He noted that the unprofessional approach of the authorities had led to a missed opportunity to fix the parameters of the agreement in a political memorandum.
It is very likely that as the internal and external situation around Ukraine worsens, and along with it the ratings and prospects of the current Ukrainian government, the verbal and political attacks of Poroshenko and his team against Zelensky will become bolder. They will try to blame him for the outbreak of war with the Russian Federation in 2022, the rapid Russian breakthrough in southern Ukraine, the poor planning of some of the offensive operations of the armed forces, and possibly even the disruption of the Minsk agreements, which could be presented as a format that would have delayed the military escalation for some time.
Petro Poroshenko is persistent, but his ratings remain poor. Both before February 24, 2022, and after, 70-80 percent of Ukrainians do not support him, making both re-election as president and the formation of a new parliamentary coalition practically impossible. He maintains a stable rating of about 10 percent, concentrating on his traditional electorate. Although he is no longer considered a serious contender for the presidency, he can play a significant role in the future coalition. Studies give Petro Poroshenko’s party second, third, or fourth place in the composition of the next Ukrainian parliament.
PETRO POROSHENKO: AN ENDURING THREAT FOR ZELENSKY
Petro Poroshenko still presents a significant threat to Zelensky and his team. He enjoys support within security and military structures inside Ukraine and in the circles of U.S. and EU elites due to his wealth, status as a long-lived heavyweight politician, and relationships with Ukrainian oligarchs and regional elites. It is he who is, although weak and compromised, a possible alternative to Zelensky on which external geopolitical players may choose to bet.
The problem for Zelensky is not only Poroshenko’s influence but also that both Ukrainian presidents are now competing for the same political niche. For Poroshenko, it saved his political career back in 2019, and for Zelensky, it was a necessity for maintaining power and managing complex processes of peace and war in the rapidly changing geopolitical environment following his election.
It is too early to write off Poroshenko completely. After all, in 2012, when he was the minister of economy in the cabinet of Mykola Azarov under President Viktor Yanukovych, no one could seriously imagine him as the president of Ukraine— much less a nationalist—in the future. Volodymyr Zelensky himself underwent a similar transformation, coming to power under the slogans of cosmopolitanism and achieving peace at any cost but then forced to lead radical political and military changes.
