On September 19, Ukrainian politician Gennady Balashov, leader of the 5.10 party, officially announced that he intends to run for president of Ukraine. In the five days since then, he has managed to collect about 200 thousand hryvnias, which is 10% of the electoral deposit required to run for president. An inspiring start.

The program of the 5.10 party implies a drastic reduction in taxes, deregulation, the reduction of the state by entire ministries, and so on—practically a full minarchist set. So, during the campaign, libertarianism will finally be discussed loudly in Russian on television, and this will allow us to test the waters to see how such ideas resonate with the broad layers of the population who are not used to gathering information from the internet.

Politics in modern Ukraine is competitive enough, so a refusal at the registration stage is unlikely—provided there is enough money. As for Russians, for now, instead of a libertarian presidential candidate, they will have to settle for Navalny. Not the worst choice, but Balashov is much closer to us.