This optimism unnerves Ukraine’s pessimistic intellectual elite.

This optimism unnerves Ukraine’s pessimistic intellectual elite. “What concerns me [is the] optimism,” Mykhailo Minakov, the Kennan Institute’s Senior Advisor on Ukraine, said in a recent telephone briefing with analysts on Ukraine’s elections. “So far, we have an unprecedented level of optimism among the Ukrainian population about the development of [the] country. We’ve never had it like this, according to the sociological polls, in all the 28 years or from [the] the early 90s….Which makes it a very big responsibility of the current winners, of President Zelenskyy and his party, not to spoil the challenge.” Concorde Capital analyst Zenon Zawada sees relief ahead: “We are confident that this optimism will evaporate by the year-end.”