KYIV – When perhaps the country’s most popular singer Svyatoslav Vakarchuk was going to give a sold-out concert at Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium on Independence Day the previous month, pundits speculated he would announce his candidacy for the March 2019 presidential race. 

It has been such a popular topic ever since he completed a fellowship at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law during the autumn of 2017. So much so that Mr. Vakarchuk, 43, is often included in polls that gauge the public’s political preferences.