FES BRIEFING UKRAINE Trade Union Monitor July 2023 POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL ­ENVIRONMENT After Volodymyr Zelenskyi came to power in 2019 along with his newcomer party Servant of the People, voters’ greatest expectations included a peaceful solution in the Donbass, economic growth, enhanced social security and a more de­termined fight against corruption. Almost from the start of Zelenskyi’s presidency, however, frequent personnel changes (so-called“permanent rotation”) in the Office of the Presi­dent and the Cabinet of Ministers, as well as at governor lev­el made it hard to implement effective structural reforms. The Donbass war caused a 16 per cent contraction of GDP and internal displacement of 2.3 million persons in 2014. 1 Between 2016 and the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the Ukrainian economy showed solid growth rates of around 3.5 per cent, although it was still suffering from the impact of the 2014–2015 crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic made matters worse, while turning the economy around from a relative re­covery into the worst downturn since the beginning of 2014. The local elections in autumn 2020 taught a serious lesson: the triumphant march of the“Servants of the People” was stopped: not a single mayoral position was won in a larger city, and the party often only came third or fourth in local councils. Ukrainian politics remained highly volatile. Although democ­racy has continued to strengthen since the Revolution of Dig­nity, there has been little talk of de-oligarchisation as part of a ground-up fight against corruption, despite partial success­es, such as the creation of an independent anti-corruption court and passing some anti-corruption legislation. the Minsk contact group had been supplemented by civil so­ciety representatives, which ensured more acceptance on the Ukrainian side, these short-term improvements did not bring about a political solution. Then on 24 February 2022 Russia began its full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine with missile attacks on peaceful cities, thus breaking all existing bilateral and international agreements and infringing the very essence of international law. The on­going Russian war on Ukraine has caused a refugee crisis not seen since the Second World War. As of May 2023, more than 8.1 million Ukrainian refugees were recorded across Europe, and around 3.6 million are internally dis­placed, 2 most of them women and children. Hostilities in the country have resulted in civilian casualties, destruction of cities’ infrastructure and public spaces. The war has also di­rectly impacted the labour market with a rapid increase in the scale of the informal economy and exacerbating existing inequalities. The Ukrainian labour market faced significant challenges even before the Russian invasion in 2022: high labour migra­tion, low employment rates, gender pay gap, elevated youth unemployment and the informal economy. According to the latest data 3 from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the informally employed population amounts to 3,462,400 people and made up 19.5 per cent of the total employed population in the first half of 2021. In fact, during 2015–2020 the total number of informally employed work­ers decreased(26.2 per cent in 2015; 20.9 per cent in 2019; 20.3 per cent in 2020). 4 Before 2022, ending the war in Donbass was the main theme of Zelenskyi’s election campaign. Although there was anoth­er Normandy Format meeting in Paris at the end of 2019 and 1 ILO; available at: https://www.ilo.org/budapest/countries­covered/ukraine/WCMS_470662/lang--en/index.htm 2 ILO; available at: https://www.ilo.org/budapest/what­we-do/projects/ukraine-crisis/lang--en/index.htm 3 The most recent data is not available due to the ongoing war. 4 State Statistics Service of Ukraine; available at: http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/operativ/operativ2017/ rp/eans/eans_u/arch_nzn_smpsz_u.htm 1