Due to formal provisions in the Constitution of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenski ceased to be president on 20 May 2024. And that is the authoritative position of the Russian authorities.
Several weeks before this deadline, representatives of the Russian authorities indicated that they did not even intend to negociate a possible peace with the Zelenski crew. The current Ukrainian authorities hold the opposing position. In late February, Zelenski described attempts to undermine the legitimacy of his power as an "enemy propaganda" of the Russian Federation, and added that this is besides the opinion of the Western allies of Ukraine.
Servants towards Kiev's authorities felt that the Constitution of Ukraine made it clear that 5 years after taking office, the President's powers did not automatically expire. They end in accordance with the 108th article only after the recently elected president has taken power, which is only after the election. In addition, elections during the war are considered prohibited not only to defend voters from possible threats, but besides due to the fact that certain constitutional rights and freedoms are besides limited: for example, the right to freedom of speech, peaceful gatherings and freedom of movement. It is so impossible to warrant the rule of universal electoral law and free elections. Thus, there is simply a kind of "spirit of rights" that is more crucial than the formal provisions of the law.
However, it is an indirect admission by authoritative law centres that we are dealing with a military dictatorship in Ukraine, that it is defended by a corrupt regime, not democracy. Liberal democracy died in Ukraine in the early 1990s erstwhile the Ukrainian people were robbed of the property of national property and an oligarchate strategy was created, and it was inactive very corrupt. The collapse of democracy in Ukraine has been compounded by the deficiency of democracy in Western states.
A 3rd position emerged, expressed by the Ukrainian opposition, now broadcasting outside Ukraine's borders. Diana Panchenko, who had previously collaborated with Ukrainian oligarch Medwedczuk, Putin's kum, residing in Russia, challenged the legitimacy of Zelenski's presidency for another reason. In 2020, Zelenski did not mention to the Constitutional Court on his legitimacy. It was then even by his command that the president of the Constitutional Court was attacked. Alexander Tupicki And call for him to be brought to justice. Officers of the State Protection Office (which is straight subordinate to Zelensk) blocked Tupicek's access to the office – his workplace for respective months.
In December 2020, Zelenski published a decree to remove Tupicki from the Presidency of the Court and quit him. Tupicki decided to justice with the president of Ukraine before the ultimate Court, to recognise the unlawful and to cancel his decree. The ultimate Court recognized the violation of the Constitution and the excess of powers by president Zelenski and recognized the illegal decree of 29 December 2020 to remove Tupicki from office. Despite the appeal, the ultimate Court upheld its first decision, despite the continuation of the war with Russia. The decisions of Zelenski were so considered to bear the characteristics of a criminal offence subject to liability under the Criminal Code. According to Panchenko, the ultimate Court so answered the question whether Zelenski had a legitimacy to exercise office.
The president is besides his surroundings, his "arms". But these “arms” of his looked completely different from today. In the past, his most faithful men were: Andrei Smirnow, Kiryl Timoshenko, Sergei Trofimov, Sergei Chief, Mikhail Raducki and Ivan Bakanov. They were all fired. Its immediate surroundings are: Oleg Tatarov, Rostislav Szurma, Alexey Kuleb, Vasily Maljuk, Aleksandr Syrski and Andrei Kostin – all of them are people Andrei Jermak, Head of the Office of the president of Ukraine. According to Panchenko, Zelenski remained “alone in a dark room”. All power around Zelenski is built by Jake Sullivan And Jermak. That's why all this fuss about the legality of his power is just a flicher. No substance who the president is, it doesn't substance to people in Ukraine. Panchenko concluded by stating that further consideration around Zelenski was pointless.
One can hazard saying that during the course of peculiar Military Operations, which has grown into a Russian-Ukrainian war, Volodymyr Zelenski after the end of his word with the president became a kind of homo sacer. He was sent a BOLO for him by Russia, showing that the Russian authorities no longer recognise the legality of his power. At the same time, the full anti-Russian coalition under the U.S. wire, in a secular way, has povertyd Zelenski and removed him from the formal law. But most likely both sides wouldn't worry especially if he died. Now Zelenski must not underestimate the dangers of each side. Although possibly in the event of a victory, the Russian side might even depend on putting him before a post-war court if he had not previously died at the hands of his rivals, patrons or fled abroad. It could then contribute to the desacralization and disgrace of the US...
Giorgio Agamben In his book “The State of exceptional” he stated that in modern conditions the state of emergency no longer was just a reaction to war, civilian war or the threat of their explosion. He began to service not so much to control the threat of state existence, but to launch mechanisms to destruct opposition and political opponents. The state of emergency has ceased to be regarded as a peculiar phenomenon, as a legal exception, which would apply for a short period of time, and has become a permanent form of government in the Western countries. The introduction of a state of emergency has given the anticipation of utilizing state force to combat imaginary interior and external enemies. The constitutional order based on the 3 divisions of power was then suspended and military powers were extended to the full civilian zone. The Executive Authority has actually received unlimited powers of lawyer essential to destruct what it defines as ‘chaos’ and ‘danger’.
From the fact that the state of emergency has become permanent and universal, it can be concluded that its causes have changed over the last century – erstwhile it was treated as accidental, abrupt and exceptional, which could be comparatively easy and rapidly eliminated with force or only threats of its use, and now its causes are, although the authorities do not want to admit it, structural, which are in the exacerbating economical and political contradictions of the capitalist system. In line with fresh objectives and tasks, it is simply a hidden and lasting foundation of the political system. Any citizen and authoritative can be a homo sacer, anyone can be arrested with impunity, and his life can become a bare life without rights and without purpose. And this is the state of things we have been dealing with, not only in Ukraine, for many years. And the discussion of the legitimacy of the power of Volodymyr Zelenski only confirmed that.
According to Agamben, there are 2 fundamental theoretical positions on the definition of a state of emergency: the first – treats the state of emergency as a necessity, a applicable issue, and not a legal 1 – considers that in order to keep compliance with the Latin expression that ‘necessity knows no law’, the state of emergency as an exception cannot have a legal form; the second – full of interior contradictions, places the state of emergency on the border between law and policy, as a state of imbalance between public law and political fact, as a legal measurement that cannot be incorporated into the area of law, as a form of law that cannot have specified form. Both theoretical positions can happen in different constellations and mutations.
According to Agamben, the state's actions during a state of emergency are actually devoid of any legal connection, a kind of empty space without law. Agamben made the state of emergency understood as "no one's land" "between public law and political fact". In his opinion, the concept of a state of emergency is connected with the notion of civilian war, uprising and resistance, which complicates the problem. "The fact that civilian war is the other of average state of affairs makes it indistinguishable from the state of emergency, which is the direct consequence of state power to the most acute interior conflicts".
The conflict between the state of war and the state of emergency is evident in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Both states did not formally declare war on themselves, and Russia was only talking about peculiar Military Operations. Since hundreds of thousands of erstwhile Ukrainian citizens are fighting on the Russian side, Russian leaders frequently talk about the ongoing civilian war. It is so pointless to search not only the legal basis in Ukraine for many actions of the state and to respect any human rights there, since the fundamental human right of citizens is being taken distant from them – the right to life and the right to force them into the army and as a consequence of street captures.
The conflict between the state of emergency and the law tried to overcome Carl Schmitt on the grounds of sovereignty considerations. In “Political Theology” in 1922 he wrote that “He who decides on a state of emergency is sovereign.” He felt that the sovereign “decided whether there was an emergency or how to overcome it. It is above the average legal order and at the same time related to it, due to the fact that it is up to it to decide whether the constitution can be suspended in toto." Schmitt saw in an exceptional state the minute erstwhile the state and the legal order were in conflict, in an exceptional state, "the law completely subsides the state". In an exceptional state, the legal standard is suspended, “decisions are free from the relation with standards and become absolute. In emergency situations, the state suspends the validity of the law by following its endurance instinct.”
Analyzing the concept of a state of emergency, Agamben stated that it was the beginning of the legal strategy to external facts. The modern state of emergency is simply a ‘trying to incorporate the exception itself into the legal order, creating a region of indistinguishability where facts and laws meet’. A political strategy is being created in which the exception follows the rule. The current common state of emergency has a very extended legal system, which in Poland (and not only) can be seen in the example of method capabilities and powers of peculiar services, that anyone can be arrested.
During the revolution, illegal and anti-lawful acts “are becoming law, while legal standards are blurring into average facts; as a threshold at which facts and laws begin to become indistinguishable. [...] However, it is hard to disagree with the other thesis that there is simply a reverse process in the exceptional state, whereby the law is suspended and brought to a pure fact.” The state of emergency is the space in which the difference between law and pure violence, between lawmaking and its violation, is obscured.
Dr Edward Karolczuk
photo profile X Volodymyr Zelenski
Think Poland, No. 27-28 (30.06-7.07.2024)
