Yanukovych's friend, Party of Regions member Vitaliy Gudzenko, is running for the Rada to increase his millions, now as part of the Poroshenko Bloc. His fortune is already $35 million.
Co-founder of Agro-Lider-Ukraine. Its assets include 3,5 hectares of land for growing crops, 1,6 pigs, and a cattle herd of over 400 breeding dairy cows. In 2007, Agro-Lider-Ukraine acquired its first processing asset from Kyiv City Council member Dmytro Andrievskyi—the country's largest oatmeal cookie producer, Boguslav Foodstuffs Plant.
Vitaliy Gudzenko, a majoritarian candidate who ran for the Verkhovna Rada in the 92nd constituency in the last election, is running for parliament again. Last time, he ran as an independent candidate under the auspices of Serhiy Tihipko's Strong Ukraine party, which dissolved after the election, and its members joined the Party of Regions. Today, Vitaliy Gudzenko is running in the constituency for a different party, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc.
This obviously doesn't change its core essence. After all, many odious "regionals"—current and former—will once again sit in parliament. Politicians who watched the Maidan nightmare from the sidelines are clamoring for power. Is it really for the sake of such changes in the country, such "lustration," and such a future, that real Ukrainians are dying in the east of the country today?
It's worth remembering that just four years ago, Vitaliy Ivanovych was the leader of the Bila Tserkva branch of the "Strong Ukraine" political party. He subsequently became the chairman of the bureau of the Kyiv regional branch of the same political party. He also held a higher position on the board of the "Regionals." After Tihipko's party merged with the Party of Regions, he was offered the position of deputy governor of the Kyiv region in exchange for withdrawing from the Verkhovna Rada in 2012. He initially agreed to this, but later resigned and ran for parliament.
True, he ran in the parliamentary elections as a technical candidate for the Party of Regions. For example, if the candidate for Regions, Kharkiv native Serhiy, failed to gain a seat in the Verkhovna Rada, the Party of Regions ultimately secured the victory of its "dark horse" candidate, Vitaliy Gudzenko.
This "knight's move," the regional leaders hope, should work now. The current election campaign will be short, and promoting new faces is difficult, expensive, and, ultimately, pointless. After all, they could use established strategies for engaging with voters, last year's campaigning and constituency work, and, most importantly, a candidate who is already known—albeit one with a "white-blue" past.
However, according to Vitaliy Gudzenko's plan, this past should be forgotten in the face of a new idea: the patronage of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc political party. Ultimately, the advantage in his work may not be his own prestige or even the bribes he can get by opening a kindergarten in his own village, but the country's president and his party's standing among Ukrainians. This is precisely what the parliamentary candidate hopes to leverage in the upcoming elections.
Vitaliy Gudzenko is currently a member of the Kyiv Regional Council. However, he won his seat not through popular vote, but through the Strong Ukraine party list, whose composition was inherited by the Party of Regions. However, during his years as a member of the Commission on Educational and Cultural Activities, he resolved no particularly important issues for the benefit of the Kyiv region, other than meetings and gatherings.
Anastasia Martsinyuk, National Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine
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