Outraged Zelenskyy and backstage of Ukraine's politics: memoirs of EU ex-ambassador in Kyiv

EU Ambassador Matti Maasikas (pictured from behind) played a part in many key decisions in Ukraine, though his role often remained invisible to the public "From 2019 to 2023, the years I was there, quite a bit happened, to put it mildly."   This is the opening line in a new book by Matti Maasikas, who headed the EU delegation in Kyiv during the historic events of recent years.

It's fairly unusual to write memoirs just a year after stepping down from a post. What makes these even more "off the grid" is the fact that Maasikas is continuing his diplomatic career. After Ukraine, he took on a leadership role in one of the EU's external action departments.  

Nonetheless, the (now former) ambassador has dared to bring details that typically remain secret forever out into the open. Advertisement: The 370-page book, published only in Estonian, is unlikely to be translated into other languages.

It is written for Estonian readers, filled with comparisons to the Estonian context and references to figures and politicians little known outside the country, and with the stated aim of "giving Estonian readers a broader understanding of Ukrainian history, society, identity, and aspirations".  The book delves deeply into historical and linguistic nuances, often explaining the sometimes free-wheeling "Cossack" nature of Ukrainians.  

There are details of conversations with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Andrii Yermak, stories about how certain reforms were pushed through, explanations of the transformations within Ukraine's leadership, and accounts of what Ukrainian government and opposition representatives said behind closed doors.  

The book also highlights intriguing differences between Ukrainian political customs and Western practices. European Pravda has read the book and selected the most interesting and relevant highlights for you.

Zelenskyy before the full-scale war

Ambassador Maasikas's tenure in Ukraine began in September 2019, when the parliament, with its single-party majority, was already operating in "turbo mode". President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was settling into his role as head of state, convinced he could deliver on his campaign pledges.  

But one of those pledges already seemed problematic - and it happened to be his central one.   This was the promise of "peace with Russia", which the ambassador says the Ukrainian leadership genuinely believed in.   Throughout the book, Matti Maasikas frequently emphasises - and has examples to back this up - that the defining characteristic of Zelenskyy as a politician is sincerity (along with the associated traits of emotionality and empathy).

Furthermore, he behaved very differently from how heads of state usually conduct themselves.   As an example, the ambassador described a dinner Zelenskyy had with G7 ambassadors in Poltava in the spring of 2020. "The president was in good spirits, answering all our questions...

But what was most impressive was that the president generously gave the floor to his advisers, even allowing one of them to interrupt him, without seeming bothered. This is very unusual for political leaders," Maasikas recalled.   The ambassador noted that the G7 ambassadors even discussed afterwards whether this was merely a performance to create a positive impression.

He himself is confident that it wasn't.  

Zelenskyy's emotional nature was both a help and a hindrance to him. "The above does not mean that Zelenskyy only had good days. I have seen him impatient, superficial, tired," the ambassador added.  

For instance, during international negotiations, Zelenskyy would sometimes fixate on a single issue that he found particularly objectionable, disregarding other important matters. This happened during one of Ursula von der Leyen's visits. Similarly, Maasikas mentioned how his first meeting with Zelenskyy in November 2019 was overshadowed by some news about Nord Stream 2 which Zelenskyy was outraged about (but was later revealed to be fake).  

These instances were exceptions. On the whole, Maasikas views Zelenskyy's emotionality as a positive trait: "Passion is important in politics; significant achievements are rarely accomplished through cold calculation alone."   However, Maasikas found it harder to agree with Zelenskyy's 2019-2020 stance on Ukraine's history.

He referred to the president's controversial New Year address, which included the words "It doesn't matter whose monument you meet your loved one in front of."   "This speech was praised by many in Ukraine and especially in the well-wishing West. However, I felt rather uneasy about it.

It does indeed matter who the monument is to, or what the street name is, and both those who praised the speech and, of course, Zelenskyy himself later learned this lesson very vividly. While Lenin statues had generally been taken down in Ukraine, since 2014, statues of Russian and Soviet generals, statesmen, and cultural figures were still standing in 2019, like trees in a forest. When they began to be changed across the board in 2022, there was no mercy for streets named after Pushkin or Tolstoy," Maasikas reflected.  

The "Russian track" of Zelenskyy's presidency is not the book's main focus, though there are some interesting references to it.

"After becoming president, there were those in Zelenskyy's team who sincerely believed that his fame as an actor in Russia would help him make peace with Moscow," the ambassador wrote.   "I can't imagine the extent of personal disappointment and rage Zelensky must have felt when his main election promise - peace with Russia - turned out to be exactly the opposite, diplomatically speaking," Maasikas noted. Although Zelenskyy realised that this goal was unattainable well before Russia's full-scale invasion, the turning point for him was likely the liberation of the north of Kyiv Oblast, when the scale of atrocities in Bucha and beyond became clear.

From Poroshenko to Boyko

The full-scale war transformed not just Ukraine's political landscape, but also its politicians.

EU Ambassador Matti Maasikas had dealings with the entire political elite, including opposition figures, and shares his observations of them in the book.   One of those figures is former president Petro Poroshenko.   The ambassador emphasises that for the current government, Poroshenko embodied everything that was wrong, and vice versa: "The mutual antipathy between Zelenskyy and Poroshenko was constant and very palpable."

Given Poroshenko's strong international connections, this animosity sometimes created challenges for the ambassador.   "I often had to explain to German Christian Democrats or Swedish conservatives that things in Ukraine were not as bad as they told me, that Zelenskyy was not a mini-Putin, that democracy was not being stifled, nor the media muzzled, understanding well from which sources such views were drawn," Maasikas recalls. "Consistently, at all meetings, whether one-on-one or in the G7 format, he claimed that all the good things in Ukraine were his doing, while Zelenskyy only ruined everything."   But that was before the full-scale war.

From 2022 onwards, Poroshenko's criticism softened considerably. According to Maasikas, there were speeches and closed-door negotiations during which Poroshenko refrained entirely from criticising the government.   One notable detail stands out.

On 23 February 2022, Poroshenko was confident that a Russian invasion was unlikely.  

"The day before the invasion began, I met with two opposition politicians whom Zelenskyy had summoned to his office on the evening of February 22nd, along with representatives from all factions of the Rada. Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy's predecessor, was less critical of the sitting president than usual. He said that a week ago, the likelihood of Kyiv being attacked was 10%, but now it's 30%," the ambassador recounts.  

The ambassador also describes an intriguing conversation he had with former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.   At their very first meeting, Tymoshenko asked the ambassador to "protect Ukraine from harmful reforms imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund". (This was an unusual request given that the positions of these institutions generally align with those of the EU. Maasikas jokes: "I wouldn't exclude the possibility that in meetings with the IMF, protection against reforms desired by the EU might have been requested.") Tymoshenko also said she was certain that "nothing about Ukraine's fate is decided in Ukraine". 

The ambassador mentions another opposition leader, cautioning readers, especially those familiar with Ukraine, that his observations about this person might be surprising.   The person in question is Yuriy Boyko, leader of the former political party Opposition Platform - For Life! (OPZZh), the "successor to Yanukovych's party", as Maasikas describes it. "The party had connections to the Kremlin until February 2022, and their perspective, or wishful thinking, about Putin was intriguing to hear for me," the diplomat explained. This includes the period of the invasion, which according to Maasikas came as a surprise to Boyko.  

"In May 2022, Boyko said that on the second day of the full-scale war, he contacted a close associate of Putin and asked only one question: does the president know that Russian forces are bombing Russian-speaking cities: Kharkiv, Sumy, Odesa? Yes, he knows, was the reply."

Andrii Yermak - complex and unfairly demonised  

When Matti Maasikas began his tenure in Ukraine, the Office of the President was still headed by  Andrii Bohdan. Interestingly, the ambassador speaks very positively about Bohdan.

The tone of his references to Andrii Yermak, however, is strikingly different.   In his book, Maasikas attempts to maintain a balanced perspective on all Ukrainian public figures, including the head of the President's Office, but the reader is left with the clear impression that his relationship with the Office was not an easy one. Nevertheless, it is not a blanket critique, but rather a description of details and situations where cooperation was ineffective.  

"Yermak is Zelenskyy's second brain hemisphere, Avakov told me in July 2022," Maasikas writes. "Although there is nothing wrong in Zelenskyy wanting to keep his chief advisor close all the time." 

The EU ambassador believes - as do many Ukrainians - that Yermak's responsibilities were too broad. He also emphasises that ultimately, this is harmful to the cause.   "Presumably, many of his shortcomings were simply due to being overwhelmed, physically unable to cope with the impossible amount of tasks at hand.

The chief of staff dealt with everything, both foreign and domestic policy. But even a superhuman, which Yermak certainly isn't, can't handle everything. When you're constantly by the president's side at every important meeting, there isn't much time left to deal with other matters," Maasikas writes, candidly admitting that he himself was unable to establish proper communication with the head of the President's Office.  

And he wasn't alone in that.   "Meetings between the head of the President's office and G7 ambassadors became less frequent, dominated more by Yermak's monologues on topics of interest to him, with partners' questions often left unanswered. It took me much longer to establish communication with Yermak than with Bohdan.

Meetings were rare," Maasikas claims, describing the consequences of the change in leadership at the President's Office in 2020. However, Maasikas emphasises that he does not believe the rumours that Andrii Yermak controls literally everything in the country, and says the popular accusations in society on this matter are unfounded. "Yermak doesn't have the time, opportunities, or scope for that," the diplomat adds. Maasikas does not question - indeed, he underlines - that the head of the President's Office has a special status within Ukraine's power system. 

"Few politicians in Ukraine are generally referred to by their first name and patronymic," Maasikas observes. "Besides Andrii Borysovych, or Yermak, there are perhaps only Petro Oleksiyovych (more palatably known to many as Pyotr Alekseyevich), meaning Poroshenko, and Yuliya Volodymyrivna (Vladimirovna), meaning Tymoshenko."

WhatsApp and other reform secrets

Mattti Maasikas jokes that a provision could easily be added to Ukraine's Constitution stating that politicians must always be on WhatsApp. This quip actually reflects a broader reality. The European diplomat expresses his surprise that email correspondence is not taken seriously by Ukrainian politicians. "In Ukraine, even ministers and senior officials often had to think for a long time before they could recall their email address, and even then, it was usually a Gmail, Hotmail, or some other personal account, not an official ministry one.

I never received any messages via email," he writes, noting that he stopped asking for email addresses after this. 

WhatsApp was the key tool for achieving agreements. According to Maasikas, Ukrainian politicians often used the messaging app to negotiate the terms of draft laws before votes, or to prevent the passage of laws that would conflict with the Association Agreement or risk creating real crises in relations with Brussels. In contrast, official letters regarding legislative amendments in Ukraine were considered unwelcome. "Sending a letter signifies that it has not been possible to agree upon matters in the course of normal diplomatic work.

Moreover, a letter sent to a politician, especially a parliamentary politician, unfortunately means practically thrusting the dispatch into the public sphere," the diplomat explains. Maasikas recounts an early experience involving resistance to official written communication before he even arrived in Kyiv in 2019. The then deputy ambassador, the charge d'affaires, sent a letter to the President's Office, the Parliament's leadership, and Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka criticising a poorly thought-out judicial reform bill. "The letter immediately became public, angered Zelenskyy's team, and caused defiance.

The bill was not amended, and the letter did not achieve its purpose; on the contrary, it worsened our relations with Ukraine's inexperienced leadership," Maasikas writes. Another notable feature of Ukraine, according to Maasikas, is the absence of planning. "Planning your work calendar in Ukraine for a longer period makes no sense.

No person from the post-Soviet space believes in planning, and we know this to be true from home as well. The planning committee was a Soviet organ, and five-year plans were a laughing stock, right? We do things that are necessary, when they are necessary," the ambassador comments with understanding and humour.

His favourite example was in September 2020 when the EU delegation received a last-minute call from Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking who from the EU delegation would be attending an event at Babyn Yar. "We haven't had an invitation, or any information about it." "You don't understand, the President's Office is asking who will be coming tomorrow?'" The invitation arrived later that evening, and the entire country's leadership and diplomatic corps attended the event the next day.

For Maasikas, hailing as he does from post-Soviet Estonia, this lack of planning did not seem like an insurmountable issue. On the contrary, it allowed him to approach Kyiv's "plans" with a more nuanced perspective. "Therefore, in Ukraine, I paid no attention to any document titled 'plan', 'strategy' or 'development plan', even when these were produced at the behest of the EU.

They were made for someone else - mostly for international donors - and were not intended to be actually fulfilled," he explains. Whether this assessment extends to the much-discussed "plans" regarding ideas for ending the war is unclear. However, Maasikas does mention the "reconstruction plan for Ukraine" developed in 2022 under the prime minister's leadership.

The plan involved creating a whole infrastructure of 23 subcommittees or working groups. "The plan was completed in time for the Ukraine Recovery and Reform Conference in Lugano in July 2022, and since then, not much has been heard about it," Maasikas summarises.

The war

The book naturally goes into some detail about the period of Russian blackmailing of the West in 2021, which eventually led to the invasion on 24 February 2022. The ambassador states that he had no doubt that a full-scale invasion would happen, as the information he was receiving from his counterparts, particularly from the American and British embassies in Ukraine, left no other option. However, the expectations were optimistic.

"On 16 February [one of the dates when US intelligence had predicted the full-scale war could start - ed.], my colleagues Artur Gebal and Eamonn Prendergast from downtown decided to stay at my place just in case. Over a not-too-anxious glass of wine, we discussed that the war was definitely coming and that Ukrainians would definitely fight fiercely. Already then, as reminded later by the colleagues staying that night at my place, I was confident Ukraine would ultimately prevail and win this unjust war," Maasikas recalls.

In the period leading up to the invasion, the EU mission in Kyiv faced a difficult task - first evacuating employees' families, and then the staff themselves, while still giving the impression that the EU was fully present in Kyiv, Maasikas acknowledges.

At the same time, the embassy was preparing for the worst, including the possibility of the Russians capturing the mission. "We copied the contents of the servers to Brussels. We sent a lot of documents to Brussels via diplomatic post, and we also destroyed quite a few documents.

We destroyed all our encryption technology for information systems, as a very large part of the information exchanged in EU diplomacy is encrypted. This was all by the book, but if I ever find myself in such a situation again, I wouldn't destroy everything - when we returned to Kyiv in April, setting up the computer network again required the presence of a representative from a Western company, who the company refused to send to a war zone," he shares. On 24 February, only seven EU diplomats remained in Kyiv.

All of them left on 25 February, as did representatives from 11 other countries. Maasikas admits that this decision was probably a mistake and he should have stayed, as Polish Ambassador Bartosz Cichocki did. However, by early April, the EU ambassador had returned to the capital, and he was the first Western diplomat to resume a permanent presence in Kyiv after the war began.

Overall, Maasikas speaks positively about the EU's position and is pleased with how Europe managed to change its perception of the situation starting from the first few days of the war.  "Right from the early phase of the invasion EU leaders managed to abandon their old instinctive statements such as 'The most important thing is to silence the guns,' 'Escalation must be prevented,' and especially 'Both sides must take steps.' The Russians would not have taken any steps according to our statements. The EU's assessment of the situation was clear: it was an unjustified and unprovoked aggression by Russia, against which Ukraine had the right to defend itself, and the European Union supported Ukraine in this.

A side was chosen, and it was a huge step for the EU," he writes. And then other changes began.   EU leaders had to abandon their preconceptions about a European future for Ukraine - or more precisely, Ukraine and Moldova.

Maasikas points out that for both political and geographical reasons, "Ukraine's accession without Moldova is almost impossible".

Ukraine's European integration

One of the tools for Ukraine's transformation has been and remains the G7 ambassador group. To Ukrainians, this group seems unanimous, but in reality, until 2022, there were differences - primarily regarding the issues it focused on.   "Germany and especially France believed that the G7 group was for supporting reforms, and that it was not appropriate for us to discuss issues related to the war (referred to as the 'conflict' before 24 February 2022)," notes the ambassador.

Similarly, there was opposition within the group regarding Ukraine's movement towards the EU: "Most of the group believed that since reforms were being made not only for the sake of making Ukraine a better place but also to align with EU-NATO standards, the G7 in Kyiv could refer to Ukraine's European path. France, sometimes supported by Italy, was strongly against this, arguing that the G7 group includes members that are not part of the EU (and/or NATO)."    However, when the full-scale war started, these differences disappeared.

Furthermore, unity in supporting Ukraine's move towards the EU began to crystallise within the European Union itself.   In early March, at the Versailles summit, EU leaders responded to the applications submitted by Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia and launched the accession process. But the summit's decision was deliberately worded so vaguely that the ambassador says he was even forced to call Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and ask her, as a participant in the negotiations, to explain what had been written.  

This caution indicated that a final breakthrough had not yet occurred. 

"Despite bold statements, the Ukrainian leadership also understood well that this issue was not yet resolved," the ambassador notes.   The key turning point came on 23 June 2022. That day, Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, called Maasikas and "said that receiving candidate status had made her cry for the first time during the full-scale war".

The ambassador speaks highly and even with admiration about Stefanishyna and her work on advancing reforms and European integration in general. "We could talk openly about everything," he notes, adding that emotions never hindered productivity.   "And one moment I will never forget. On 18 January 2023, Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi died in a helicopter crash along with 15 others.

I was with Stefanishyna when the news came. Her eyes briefly filled with tears, a swear word slipped out, and then... back to business, Matti."

The complexity of Ukrainian reforms

Matti Maasikas is very realistic about reforms in Ukraine. On one hand, like all Western observers, he believes that the country is doing a lot given that there is a war on.

On the other hand, he has seen obstacles - sometimes artificial ones - stand in the way of important reforms being carried out, and also realised that some actions have been clearly anti-reformist.   One example of this is the desire of Zelenskyy's team to control the National Bank of Ukraine, which had been apparent since 2019. Interestingly, the President's Office lost that competition, and Maasikas is convinced that the reason for this was the high-quality reform of the National Bank carried out during Poroshenko's presidency, which helped the Bank's leadership defend its independence.  

From the book, it appears that Matti Maasikas understands the ruling authorities' resistance to any public insistence from Ukraine's Western partners.

"It was especially important knowing how sensitive Zelenskyy's team was to anything that could be publicly interpreted as foreign pressure, especially regarding the appointment or removal of officials. Handling things confidentially, one could hope for a better outcome," he emphasises.   The story about WhatsApp diplomacy is one indicator of this.

Sometimes it was impossible to avoid a certain amount of publicity, though, such as during the judicial reform, which the ambassador calls "the mother of all reforms" and which the EU delegation began actively pushing in autumn 2020 in collaboration with Andrii Kostin, then the head of the relevant committee of Ukraine's parliament, and from 2022 onwards the Prosecutor General. This involved reforming the bodies that form the judiciary - the High Council of Justice (HCJ) and the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ).   Moreover, international experts were to have not only representation in these bodies, but a decisive influence on personnel decisions - a red line that the President's Office had itself drawn.  

The president's position on the reform constantly changed under Western influence. "In the spring of 2021, Zelenskyy at times swore that such a role for foreigners would never happen, at other times he directed the Rada [Ukraine's parliament] majority to get it done. In early June, Kostin and I, now good friends, fine-tuned the final details," the ambassador recalls.   The turning point occurred in mid-June 2021, at a closed meeting between the president, key ministers, and lawmakers. "One participant mentioned receiving a demanding letter from the G7 about judicial reform.

Another boasted of receiving two letters, one from the G7 and a joint EU-US letter. The most triumphant participant had three, adding a letter from the European Commission's Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis responsible for financial assistance. This apparently broke the camel's back," the diplomat recounted.  

"Naturally, the Ukrainian leadership was not pleased by this pressure. Nor did I enjoy it; ideally, the reform would have proceeded without such conditions," he concluded. However, the main thing was the result.

In July, Ukraine's parliament passed the necessary laws.   But then the implementation of the reform started to stall due to a structure independent of the President's Office - the Congress of Judges, led by Bohdan Monych. "After several anxious conversations with Kostin and Smyrnov [Andrii Smyrnov, then Deputy Head of the President's Office - ed.], I decided there was no choice but to go public, which is generally a last resort in diplomacy.

In September 2021, I wrote an op-ed for European Pravda calling on the Judges' Congress and the HCJ to nominate their candidates. This was followed by a joint article with Kristina Kvien and Melinda Simmons in October, primarily appealing to the conscience of the Judges' Congress," the ambassador shared.   The fact that someone else was stalling the reform, which the President's Office had eventually (albeit reluctantly) agreed to, completely changed the picture.  

Zelenskyy went from opposing the reform to turning into one of its strongest supporters.

The President's Office called several meetings with all the parties involved, including Bohdan Monych, where he found himself under pressure from all sides and agreed to put the matter to the congress, thus unblocking the process. "Even after the congress's decision, Monych hesitated one last time, claiming he couldn't sign the document (followed by a lengthy legal explanation), but a few WhatsApp messages from me and the signatures were finally placed on paper," Maasikas added.   Of course, this did not complete the reform of Ukraine's judiciary system, which according to the ambassador "is akin to cleaning the Augean stables", but it was a very important step forward.  

Is the EU willing to compromise with the Ukrainian authorities? Yes, definitely. Especially now, during the full-scale war.

And not just the EU, but all the members of the G7. "In April 2022, we decided that despite several things that would be reprehensible in normal times, such as the bill on state enterprise management, the shutdown of Poroshenko's television channels, our threshold for response was currently too high; first and foremost, we needed to help Ukraine win this war," Matti Maasikas explained.   And there is no doubt that after achieving this goal, the level of compromise acceptable to Western partners will change.  

The book was read and summarised by

Sergiy Sydorenko,  Editor, European Pravda Translated by Daria Meshcheriakova

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