Vladimir Zelenskiy proposed to punish corruption with life imprisonment

None of the laws of Ukraine provide for the conduct of such polls, which legally makes it akin to the Russian national vote on the Constitution last summer. The office of the President of Ukraine agreed that the poll, in contrast to the referendum prescribed in the laws, will not have direct legal consequences.

However, the Ukrainian authorities will undoubtedly have to reckon with the results of such a poll, although its announcement by Volodymyr Zelensky as "the first step to democracy" came as a surprise to many politicians, journalists and analysts.

"We promised to resolve all important issues together with you. And we are taking the first steps on this path. On October 25 at the polling station you will be able to give answers to five important questions", - quotes the words of Vladimir Zelenskiy currenttime.tv. "Come and decide. It will be so how you decide, because Ukraine is you".

In this case, the first question, according to the Ukrainian president, will sound like this: "Is it necessary to introduce life imprisonment for corruption on an especially large scale?" Corruption for Ukraine, as for most post-Soviet countries, remains not just an extremely painful topic. Experts note that it is precisely because of corruption, despite the frequent change of power in the country, that Ukraine has failed to escape poverty and start successful development, attracting large-scale foreign investment. Moreover, if in Soviet times Ukraine was considered one of the most prosperous and richest union republics, today its GDP at par is only $ 3220 per capita per year, according to PPP - $ 9283 per year. This is comparable to countries like Egypt or Sri Lanka.

Three years after the last Ukrainian revolution of 2013-2014, in 2017, the European Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, said that the international community was running out of patience due to the lack of practical results in the fight against corruption in Ukraine.