barbos
Contributor
Oh, Vladimir the Manipulator Putin myth again. Poroshenko was not outmaneuvered or manipulated by Putin. If anybody was manipulated it was Russia/Putin. Putin has this annoying habit of trying to buy friends. And all former soviet republics took advantage of that - Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, even Baltic States to some degree were using Putin desire to have friends around Russia's border.The comic just elected probably will do no worse that his predecessors.
I tend to be more suspicious of inexperienced politicians, because their lack of familiarity with their office and the issues tends to make them more susceptible to manipulation by others. We have seen this kind of thing at work with Donald Trump, who seems to be oblivious to just about every past policy and practice that ever affected his job. So he takes direction from talking heads on Fox News.
In Zelensky's case, he will likely make appointments and back policies that his oligarch patron favors, including an effort to fix his legal problems. As for foreign relations, my guess is that he will be more easily manipulated or outmaneuvered by Putin than Poroshenko was. I suspect that Zelensky's halo will become tarnished in fairly short order, as the knives come out for him. They made much of how he was able to battle venal politicians and the entrenched oligarchy in his TV series, but those acting roles probably didn't prepare him much for dealing with real government crises.
One of the dangers of this new ukrainian president is possibility of new gas transit agreement. I hope there will be no meaningful transit over Ukraine.