Ukrainska Pravda sources report "raised voices" at recent Poroshenko-Zelenskyy meeting

On 26 May, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, leader of the European Solidarity Party and his opponent in the last elections, for the first time in years. The two politicians are said to have raised their voices and traded accusations. Sources have told Ukrainska Pravda that Poroshenko was left with "a strange feeling of emptiness" after the meeting.

Source: UP article Budanov, Arakhamiia or Fedorov: who could become Zelenskyy's new pillar of support? (English translation coming soon)

Details: On 26 May, Poroshenko waited for Zelenskyy on the third floor of the President's Office on Bankova Street. His meeting with Zelenskyy did not begin for a long time. He waited almost an hour. All the other faction leaders had already had their audience with the president.

Davyd Arakhamiia, leader of the president's faction in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament), and Kyrylo Budanov, Head of the President's Office, had reportedly talked to Poroshenko in advance and tried to establish a framework for the conversation.

But according to Ukrainska Pravda's sources, Poroshenko came to the President's Office armed with printouts of various memes and other materials from social media and launched into a rant, complaining that Zelenskyy and his circle were systematically discrediting him.

"For a few seconds, everyone on our side was speechless," one eyewitness from the government team said.

Quote: "Words in response came quickly: within moments, the conversation had switched to raised voices and the only form of the enemy's cultural presence that can't be replaced – Russian swearwords.

The president [Zelenskyy] was outraged that Poroshenko was trying to cast himself as a victim when in his view, the fifth president's 'Porokhobots' [Poroshenko supporters] behave just as aggressively online and cost 'millions of dollars'.

At the very least, Zelenskyy believed Poroshenko had no moral right to reproach him over something like that."

More details: Zelenskyy, in turn, raised concerns about Poroshenko's support for potential rivals to the current government, above all Ukraine's ambassador to London, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

At that point, Poroshenko had to choose his words carefully. He responded that if the entire machinery of the state and all available government resources were being used against him, there was nothing surprising about him seeking help from anyone capable of challenging the current authorities.

Ukrainska Pravda's sources said that despite its rocky start, the meeting gradually became somewhat constructive.

At certain points, the sources said, it resembled a conversation between people who might be able to get over their mutual dislike and try to do something together for their country.

Poroshenko did not even directly raise the issue of the sanctions imposed on him, although he did mention that they are hindering his work.

"The position was simple: if we agree now on some model of cooperation, then the sanctions issue will eventually fall away by itself," a source from Poroshenko's team said. "If there is no agreement, then no requests will make any sense at all."

After the meeting ended, Poroshenko was left with a strange feeling of emptiness. Ukrainska Pravda's sources from the teams of Yuliia Tymoshenko and Dmytro Razumkov (leader of Smart Politics, an inter-factional association) said the same.

"No one agreed on anything. No one asked for anything, not even what we were ready to offer. There were no concrete decisions or proposals," a lawmaker from Razumkov's group told Ukrainska Pravda.

Zelenskyy's team explained that this approach – to ask for nothing and promise nothing – had been a deliberate decision.

As one member of Zelenskyy's team put it, "this first meeting was needed for something else entirely. We could not offer anything because we had different considerations."

Background:

• On 26 May, Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a series of separate meetings with leaders of parliamentary factions and groups, rather than a single large meeting as had been expected. It was announced that these meetings will be held regularly from now on and that "the dialogue will become permanent".
• Following the meeting, Poroshenko said on Facebook that he and Zelenskyy had agreed to hold such meetings regularly.
• Iryna Herashchenko, an MP from the European Solidarity parliamentary faction, said that during the meeting with Zelenskyy, Poroshenko had discussed key issues on the state agenda and "asked for nothing".
• In February 2025, it was reported that the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine had imposed sanctions on Petro Poroshenko.

Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!