This April, popular comedian and successful show businessman Volodymyr Zelenskiy became Ukraine’s president, winning a landslide victory over oligarch Petro Poroshenko. Seventy-three percent of voters rejected Poroshenko’s aggressive nationalism in favor of a new face who promised to defy the “old politicians” and their corruption. This victory was but reinforced in the July 21 parliamentary elections. Zelenskiy’s brand new party, Servant of the People — named after the comedian’s TV show — won a solid majority, taking 254 of 450 seats.

Decisively, this also helped turn the page on the political divides established by the Maidan uprising of 2014. While five years ago the parties who identified with Maidan won a significant majority, this time they took just one in six seats; two of the five parties that formed the ruling coalition in 2014 fell below the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament. After collapsing to close to zero in the polls, the second-largest party in the last parliament — People’s Front — did not even put up lists of candidates. Meanwhile, the “pro-Russian,” anti-Maidan opposition parties increased their representation from twenty-nine to forty-nine seats, though this still counts for barely one in ten of the total.

For the first time in the history of post-Soviet Ukraine, there will be a single-party majority and government. This result came as a surprise even for the winners of the elections. Indeed, if the elections proved that Ukraine’s old elites do not understand their country anymore, their replacements understand it hardly any better.