The newly-minted opposition's strategy will be another power reboot. Their tactical moves are easily calculated, allowing the authorities to avoid fatal mistakes.
Today, the opposition lost another battle. It lost not because, as Sergei Leshchenko claimed, the vote for the law allowing a person without a law degree to head the Prosecutor General's Office was made possible by the votes of "oligarchic factions." This is a typical manipulation. The "Eurooptimists," "Samopomich," "Batkivshchyna," and "Radicals" could just as easily be accused of colluding with Akhmetov and Lyovochkin's "Opposition Bloc," which also rejected the aforementioned legislative changes. The opposition's latest defeat was made possible for a different reason: these politicians base their statements exclusively on negative discourse. Yet, they have no intention of changing their discourse. Therefore, they become predictable.
All the opposition's tactical moves can be accurately predicted. The first is accusations of collusion between the government and the oligarchs. Compromising stories will be sought to support this. Already, some opposition representatives are categorically declaring that the government will have to give preferential treatment to shareholders of the Renaissance and People's Will parties for supporting the government's initiatives. There is no evidence of such preferential treatment yet, but the topic has already become a hot topic.
The second tactical move is to claim that the West is disillusioned with Ukraine. This narrative has been floating around for months, and now we can expect it to be amplified by the media. Claims of "disillusionment" will be backed up by various manipulations. The effectiveness of this technique can be seen in the hype surrounding the offshore scandal. Meanwhile, any critical statement by Western politicians or experts will be dissected to suggest that dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian government is growing in the EU and the US. The main focus is to loudly shout about corruption, the IMF's refusal to provide Ukraine with the next tranche, the "special status" of Donbas, and so on.
Considering that this tactic is also used by Russia in its hybrid war, our opposition has the opportunity to exploit the theme of "disappointment" for quite some time. And it doesn't matter that the leaders of key EU countries and the European Parliament support Ukraine's political course.
The third move is a war on tariffs. We can expect Yulia Tymoshenko and Oleh Lyashko to step up their efforts here. It's a truly fertile topic. The opposition, of course, won't offer any alternatives. And they don't need to. The main thing is to pretend to defend the interests of the people.
The fourth move is to fight privatization. Tymoshenko has already stated that state monopolies such as Ukrzaliznytsia and Naftogaz Ukrainy should not be privatized. She appeals to the myth that strategic enterprises are being sold off for next to nothing. This strategy will be quite effective, especially if protests are organized against the privatization of certain assets.
Given that Tymoshenko and Co. do not want Yuriy Lutsenko (or any other candidate unfavorable to the opposition) as Prosecutor General, one can expect powerful information attacks against the new head of the Prosecutor General's Office. For example, the opposition will demand repression—initiating criminal cases against certain oligarchs, former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and individual politicians whom they have long labeled corrupt. The goal of such information attacks is simple: to convince the public that the new Prosecutor General is the same as the old one. However, it is precisely baseless criminal cases that can damage the country's image. It was precisely these cases that began the fall of the Yanukovych regime.
Does the opposition have an ultimate goal? Until recently, it was snap parliamentary elections. Since they've been removed from the agenda following the government change, the opposition will do everything to reintroduce the topic of new elections into the political discourse. And not just a reboot of the Verkhovna Rada, but of the government as a whole.
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