For a time, ordinary Ukrainians perceived Volodymyr Zelensky as part of a political show. Yes, most of them had begun to suspect they were deceived. There would be no breakthrough to the happy future that the TV comedian had promised before the elections. But this was the case with every president. Half the country hates him, half supports him. The main thing was that people could live peacefully, and no one interfered in their affairs.
Notably, deep down, Ukrainians fully understand the danger that amateurs pose. This can be seen in their attitude towards doctors. In case of serious illness, Ukrainians immediately seek out the best doctor in the city and personally bribe him to ensure the surgery goes well and that the doctor makes every effort to save their relative. In times of real health danger, they are not at all concerned that this doctor is corrupt and has taken bribes all his life. No one wants a bad doctor or, even worse, a novice without experience to perform their surgery.
The first serious crisis that came to Ukraine with the coronavirus showed that in the 2019 elections, Ukrainians deceived themselves. A comedian cannot protect the population in case of a threat. His purpose is to entertain people, not save them. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that in our case, the head of the state was a corrupt comedian.
Let’s recall the sequence of events. The first case of coronavirus in Ukraine was detected at the end of February 2020, a month later than in most other European countries. This gave Ukrainian authorities additional time to better prepare for the epidemic. Indeed, initially, it appeared that the Ukrainian Ministry of Health was ready to face the new challenge. Television and the internet began to explain to the population the need to wash hands more often and avoid contact with those who show signs of a cold or have recently returned from abroad. New instructions were also given to border guards. On January 31, by the order of President Zelensky, the government formed an operational staff to fight the coronavirus.
But then everything went according to the worst scenario. As in other countries, panic began in Ukraine. People started hoarding medical masks and cold symptom medications from pharmacies. The cost of a regular medical mask rose from 1 to 17 hryvnias.
In early March 2020, a scandal erupted. Spanish television showed a story about the arrival of a shipment of medical masks and respirators of Ukrainian manufacture. As it turned out, in February, 118 tons of filtered masks and 408 tons of non-filtered masks were exported from Ukraine. Most other countries had already banned the export of these medical products. But not in Ukraine. On January 31 and February 3, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, sent two letters to Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk about the need to ban the export of medical masks. Nonetheless, the government did not respond for more than a month. The export ban on these products was introduced only on March 11, when millions of masks had already been exported from Ukraine. Let me remind you that an operational staff had been working in the country for over a month, headed by the president.
By March 20, 2020, 40 cases of Covid-19 had already been confirmed in Ukraine. The vaccine was still far off. At that time, all attention was focused on coronavirus tests and ventilators. There was a shortage of tests, but they began to be supplied to the country through the World Health Organization. The situation with ventilators was even worse. For a country of 42 million, there were only 3,900 units. But similar problems were observed in other countries; Ukraine was not an exception. Meanwhile, the epidemic gradually spread across the regions. The mortality rate of patients connected to ventilators in Ukraine was 88%. This is a high figure. In Germany, for example, it was 53%.
What was the president doing during the crisis? On April 12, 2020, Zelensky publicly promised a $1 million reward to Ukrainian scientists for inventing a vaccine or medicine against coronavirus. A rather strange offer, considering that Ukraine lacks the laboratories and specialists for molecular modeling of drugs at such a level. The president might as well have promised $1 billion for a Ukrainian’s flight to Mars.
This is just another aspect of Volodymyr Zelensky’s portrait, with worse to come. The first signs that Ukrainians were facing serious problems appeared in the summer of 2020 when clinical trials of the first vaccines began in the USA and Europe. Ukrainian authorities did not even try to reserve a minimum quantity of vaccines directly from the manufacturers, as the governments of the United Kingdom, USA, Canada, Israel, and many other countries did. These countries acted quite actively, while Ukraine simply waited for free vaccines to be provided through WHO and the UN.
Mass vaccination of the population in Ukraine started on February 24, 2021, much later than in EU countries. For example, on the same day, February 24, the Polish government reported that 1 million people had already been vaccinated in their country.
The pace of vaccination in Ukraine remained very slow throughout the epidemic. By the end of March 2021, only 230,000 Ukrainians, or 0.4% of the population, had been vaccinated. The operational staff led by Zelensky did almost nothing to accelerate vaccination. The situation could have been improved by issuing clear orders mandating vaccination for the population involved in the real sector of the economy, under threat of dismissal or fines. However, none of this was done. Instead of real work, the president only made promises.
On May 5, 2021, Volodymyr Zelensky stated that by Independence Day (August 24), most Ukrainians should be vaccinated. Of course, this remained just empty words. As of August 24, only 3.2 million people, or less than 10% of the country’s population, had been vaccinated.
While in neighboring Poland, the vaccination of teachers was completed by March 7, in Ukraine, it was delayed by 5 months. Only in August, before the start of the new school year on September 1, did the state finally threaten to prevent teachers who had not yet received the vaccine from working.
By the end of October 2021, only 16% of the population in Ukraine was vaccinated. For comparison: in France − 79%, in Germany − 66%, Latvia − 49%, Romania − 29%. Ukraine’s figures were lower than any EU country. Even in Bulgaria, the least vaccinated country in the European Union, more than 20% of people were vaccinated.
The vaccination failure cost Ukraine tens of thousands of additional lives that could have been saved if the authorities had acted decisively. Apparently, Zelensky was afraid to make unpopular decisions to avoid losing voter support. It is worth noting that a significant portion of Zelensky’s supporters are poorly educated. If a person is skeptical about vaccination, there’s a 90% chance they are a Zelensky voter. Being an experienced showman, the president did not want to disappoint his audience, did not want to coerce anyone, and procrastinated in the hope that the problem would somehow disappear on its own. The result of this delay is tens of thousands of deaths. These people could have stayed alive if not for Zelensky.
According to official data as of September 2023, 109,000 people died from coronavirus in Ukraine. But there are reasons to believe that these numbers are significantly understated. The statistics on overall mortality indicate that, from March 2020 to July 2021, Ukraine saw about 100,000 “excess” deaths compared to previous years. Meanwhile, official statistics claim that as of the end of June 2021, 52,532 people had died from coronavirus in Ukraine. This contradiction suggests that for every recorded death from COVID-19, there was another unrecorded one. Likely, to avoid spoiling the statistics of their medical institution or region, doctors often recorded the cause of death as another disease, such as pneumonia or heart failure.