‘The issue of elections has been raised by various partners. Ukraine itself has never raised it. But of course, we are ready for elections. It’s very simple to do: establish a ceasefire – and there will be elections. Meaning, it is a matter of security.’ 5.

‘As for announcing elections in general, I’ll repeat: first security, then politics. We can move toward elections when all the relevant security guarantees are in place.’ 4/.

‘Therefore, February 24 cannot be used to announce any elections – any elections at all. This is not about individuals. No elections can be announced on February 24.’ 3/

‘It’s a large number of people who have defended our state and given their lives. And it is since February 24 that our people have been defending their country every day. I could never do such a thing.’2/

Governing is extremely hard - even more so in our febrile social media age. That doesn’t excuse lack of intellectual+policy preparation or poor judgement. But doesn’t it demand some degree of realism rather than a demand for perfection+the acknowledgment of human error+subsequent course corrections?

It’s reasonable in my view, to want a government to do better, and to fear for our future democracy. It’s also reasonable to examine and critique policies+political skills, or lack of them. But an over concentration on political drama,+negativity obscures any halfway decent policies+stokes cynicism.

Just because some of these complainants want the government to succeed or at least to do better, fearing perhaps something much worse in the future, does not necessarily invalidate their concerns about the tenor of press coverage over recent times. It doesn’t disqualify them from commenting.

I’ve noticed on here a group of distinguished political, academic+policy contributors, whose work I truly admire, speaking with some disdain to those lesser mortals who complain about what they see as hysterical political press coverage. Their views are dismissed and discounted as merely partisan.

It also leads to a fairness deficit, which itself adds to general distrust and disillusion - very corrosive of democracy. If everything any govt does is reported negatively, and nothing constructive or even halfway successful is ever highlighted in bulletins it leads to more and more public anger.