Friends, former subordinates, public activists and former "carcasses" are on the "Civic Position" list
Photo from Gritsenko's Facebook page
"Civic position" Anatoly Gritsenko In this parliamentary campaign, he is playing the role of a war party. The politician and his team are aggressively criticizing the president and the government on both economic issues and the resolution of the Donbas conflict. This positioning allows the former defense minister's team to attract the attention of voters dissatisfied with the president's vague peacekeeping policy.
Unlike other candidates in the election race who have chosen the same niche, such as Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna or Arseniy Yatsenyuk's People's Front, Civil Position maintains its pure opposition status. After all, its representatives are not yet sitting in the government offices on Hrushevsky Street.
Nevertheless, many voters and analysts are increasingly wondering whether any influential oligarchs are supporting Gritsenko's political force. Until now, only one theory has been floated: that "Civic Position" receives financial support from former head of the Presidential Administration Serhiy Lyovochkin.
However, INSIDER was unable to find any concrete evidence confirming such cooperation. It's difficult to discern any connection between Gritsenko's party and Levochkin or any other oligarch based on the composition of the Civil Position party.
However, the shortlist includes many people with unstable ideological views who had previously served in other parties. Overall, according to INSIDER, the shortlist was distributed according to the following quota: people, primarily military personnel, who had previously worked personally with Gritsenko and earned his trust, well-known public activists, heads of regional organizations, and major sponsors.
According to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), in early September, the rating of Civil Position (Anatoly Hrytsenko) reached 6-7%. The strengthening of the party by the Democratic Alliance team could add another few tenths of a percentage point to this figure. Ultimately, the former defense minister's team could secure 25-30 parliamentary seats.
INSIDER analyzed the party's electoral list.
1. The leader of the list is Anatoly Gritsenko. Over the past seven years, the politician has demonstrated slow but steady growth. For example, while in the 2007 snap elections, after his resignation as minister, he was merely one of the leading lights of Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc, in the 2012 campaign, Yulia Tymoshenko's team gave him the second spot on the "White-Hearted" party list, behind Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Now, Hrytsenko is leading his own project in the elections, hoping to convert his fourth-place finish in the last presidential race, where he received 5,48%, into his own parliamentary faction.
2. Vasily Gatsko – leader of the Democratic Alliance party and a well-known social activist. Gatsko's organization gained notoriety beginning in mid-2013 thanks to its organization of regular pickets of law enforcement agencies, visits to the country residences of officials from Viktor Yanukovych's team, and a mobilization information campaign that played a role in the beginning and later formation of the organizational structures of the Euromaidan.
Gatsko's main career is in public service. He initially led the Christian Democratic Youth of Ukraine (2005-2010), and since 2010, he has led the Democratic Alliance. In May of this year, he was elected to the Kyiv City Council.
3. Marina Solovieva She also represents the non-governmental sector on the Civil Position list. The candidate has a private law practice and simultaneously heads the NGO "Andreevsko-Peysazhnaya Initiative" (protecting Kyiv's historical architectural heritage from illegal demolition and construction). Additionally, Marina Solovieva serves as secretary of the temporary special commission for the vetting of judges at the High Council of Justice. However, perhaps the main factor that secured her high spot on the party's electoral list was her recent experience as an assistant to MP Anatoliy Hrytsenko.
4. Oleg Derevyanko Kyiv residents might remember Derevyanko for the recent mayoral elections, in which he placed only 14th with 0,28% of the vote (running as a candidate for the Ukrainian People's Party). The candidate has achieved more in business. Specifically, he was managing partner of Office Solutions Ukraine (1998-2006) and CEO of Kozyrnaya Karta (2006-2008) and Kolos Ltd. Derevyanko is also known in Kyiv as a patron of the arts and philanthropist. According to INSIDER, he maintains a friendly relationship with Anatoly Gritsenko's son, Oleksiy.
Oleg Derevyanko. Photo from the candidate's personal Facebook page.
5. Vitaliy Shabunin is the youngest candidate from the Civil Position party, at just 29 years old. He secured a spot on the qualifying list through the Democratic Alliance quota. Shabunin currently heads the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a public organization. Despite his young age, he previously served as a member of the Rivne City Council (2006-2011), an advisor to former Rivne Regional State Administration Head Viktor Matchuk (2006-2007), then as an assistant to Verkhovna Rada Deputy Matchuk (2007-2011), and as a freelance advisor to former Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Vasyunyk (2008).
6. Petr Landyak He leads the Ternopil regional organization of the "Civic Position" party and is the party's sole representative on the Ternopil City Council (he won the election in a single-mandate constituency). Since 1993, he has managed the former municipal enterprise, now the Texterno Universal LLC. In 2011, he served as first deputy to Svoboda's Serhiy Nadal, the mayor of Ternopil. According to Gritsenko himself, Landyak is one of the party's main sponsors in these elections.
On the right is Petr Landyak. Photo from his Facebook page.
7. Taras Stetskiv He was a member of the Verkhovna Rada of the first six convocations and, at various times, belonged to the RUKh (Rus.), NDP (People's Democratic Party), PRP (Party of the Party of Regions), and People's Self-Defense (People's Self-Defense). He now holds a party card with the Civil Position (Civil Position) party. Stetskiv was one of the field commanders of the 2004 Maidan and a coordinator of the 2013-2014 Euromaidan. He has a long-standing friendship with Gritsenko, as well as with Yuriy Lutsenko, the chairman of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. In 2012, both politicians asked Yulia Tymoshenko to include Taras Stetskiv on the Batkivshchyna electoral list, but to no avail. He himself failed to gain a seat in parliament in the 117th single-member constituency of the Lviv region, losing to Ihor Vasyunyk.
8. Anatoly Zabarilo – head of the Lviv regional branch of the party. He represents the media group within Gritsenko's team (heading the Lvivska Pochta newspaper). From 2006 to 2010, he was a city council member representing the PORA party.
9. Ivan Aparshin Aparshin was a former subordinate of Anatoly Gritsenko when he served as Minister of Defense. Specifically, he served as an aide to the minister (2005) and later headed the Defense Ministry's Department of Military Policy and Strategic Planning. Unlike Gritsenko, who left the ministry in 2007, Aparshin continued to serve in the government until 2014. His last position was as head of the Security and Defense Expertise Department of the Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat. It was likely this man that Anatoly Stepanovich frequently referred to during the Euromaidan protests, discussing the possible use of armed forces to suppress the protest movement.
10. Oleg Kanivets – another close associate of the leader of the Civil Position party, head of the party's campaign headquarters, and a current member of the Verkhovna Rada. In 2013, Kanivets found himself at the center of a scandal after leaving the Batkivshchyna faction in parliament.
Oleg Kanivets
In doing so, the deputy violated his pre-election commitment to work exclusively for this party team. For this, many colleagues called him a "carcass," even though Oleh Kanivets continued to vote in sync with the then-opposition. The politician himself explained his demarche by citing the Batkivshchyna leadership's information warfare against him in his native Lviv Oblast. However, former party colleagues were convinced that Kanivets had received a dollar reward for his demarche. Gritsenko, who had previously promised to resign if any of his associates violated their oath of office, also had to bear the brunt of the scandal.
During his political career, Kanivets has already switched parties three times. In 2003, he headed the Our Ukraine faction in the Lviv Regional Council, in 2005 he agreed to lead the Batkivshchyna faction there, and in 2011, he switched to the Ukrainian Party of his friend Ihor Nasalik (the mayor of Kalush, running for the Verkhovna Rada on behalf of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc in single-member constituency No. 85). However, in 2012, he ran for the Rada as a Batkivshchyna candidate.
In 2009-2012, he headed the company "Ukrnaftoburinnya" and is also a co-founder of the construction company "Ukrtechnobudinvest".
11. Sergey Savisko – head of the party's Central Control and Auditing Commission. He ran twice for the regional and city councils of his native Cherkasy – in 2010 and 2014, respectively – but lost both times. He is a private politician and is involved in private entrepreneurship (Spetsmebli LLC).
12. Leonid Makul – another current MP, also elected under the banner of Batkivshchyna (No. 68). Fellow members of the new party, Civil Position, name Makul (founder of Serednofontanskyi Shopping Center LLC) as one of the organization's main sponsors. This is likely why he ranks so high on the electoral list, unlike his colleague in the Odesa regional organization and its chair, Olha Pulkhrova, who only landed in 39th place.
In 2006, Makul ran for the Rada under the unwinnable number 441 on the Our Ukraine list. In 2007, he received 216th place on the same political party's list, and in 2012, 68th place, this time with the Batkivshchyna party. He previously served on the team of the former mayor of Odesa, now a member of parliament from UDAR. Eduard Gurvits (in 2006-2010 he was a city council deputy from the Gurvits bloc).
Number 13 went to renowned journalist Natalia Sokolenko (formerly a reporter for STB and now for Public Radio). Her preferred spot on the list is the Democratic Alliance quota. Sokolenko was one of the founders of the journalistic movement "Stop Censorship!", which regularly criticizes the Viktor Yanukovych administration for its suppression of freedom of speech in Ukraine.
14. Igor PukshiHe gained widespread recognition in 2007, when, as Deputy Head of the Presidential Secretariat, he provided legal support for Viktor Yushchenko's legally dubious decree dissolving parliament on April 2, 2007. Pukhin served on the third president's team from 2006 to 2009 (overseeing law enforcement and defense). It was then that he established, first a business relationship and then a friendship, with Anatoliy Hrytsenko, a minister and later the head of the Verkhovna Rada's Defense Committee. He is also one of the party's main sponsors.
Igor Pukhin
15. Alexander Kralyuk He earned a spot on the shortlist both because he has led the Volyn regional organization of "Civic Position" since 2010 and because he participated in the liberation of Donbas as part of the Aidar volunteer battalion. And such people are in high demand by all political forces in this election campaign.
16. Nicholas Neshchadim Neshchadim is another career military officer and former subordinate of Gritsenko. He worked with the party leader in the Ministry of Defense, serving as Deputy Minister (2005-2008). He is a retired lieutenant general. He has retired since 2008 and heads the party's central executive committee.
17. Nikolai Ladovsky He represents the Ivano-Frankivsk region in the "Civic Position" party, where Hrytsenko entrusted him with the local branch of his party. In the last elections in 2012, Mykola Vasyliovych ran for the Verkhovna Rada alongside Hrytsenko on the Batkivshchyna party list (No. 186). He is a liquidator of the Chernobyl accident. Since 2002, he has owned and managed the construction company "Specialized Mobile Mechanized Column No. 618" LLC. This will be Mykola Ladovskyi's second election campaign. In his first, the 2010 Ivano-Frankivsk mayoral election, he finished only 14th with 0,3% of the vote.
18. Alexander Melnik – head of the Chernihiv regional branch of the Civil Position party, he represents the quota of regional party branch leaders on the list. Currently, he is a member of the Chernihiv City Council, where he ran in 2010 as a member of Batkivshchyna. In 2010, he defected to Gritsenko's party. He serves as deputy head of the Dom Knigi municipal enterprise.
19. Viktor Tkachuk, head of the Civil Position party in the Zhytomyr region, also falls under this quota. According to local media reports, Tkachuk has not been particularly active in his regional party position. He is a medical doctor by education (a surgeon) and works as a marketing manager at Pharmastart LLC. Until 2011, he represented Pavlo Zhebrivskyi's Ukrainian Platform in the region.
Viktor Tkachuk. Photo from the candidate's Facebook page.
20. Another shot from the party’s public asset – Natalia PshenyanikShe heads the Luhansk branch of the "Civic Position" movement. Natalia Vitalievna is known in her native Luhansk for her trade union work—from 2007 to 2010, she headed the Association of Free Trade Unions. Since 2012, she has headed the Luhansk office of the insurance company "ST Dominanta." With the onset of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO), she took up volunteer work, providing supplies to the Aidar volunteer battalion.
21. Alexey Koba (not to be confused with the Automaidan activist), according to INSIDER, earned a spot on the shortlist thanks to his assertiveness in defending his own interests. Back in 2008, Oleksiy Koba, a resident of the village of Havronshchyna in the Kyiv region and deputy head of the State Property Fund's post-privatization support department, approached MP Anatoliy Hrytsenko for assistance in a land dispute with the then-head of the village council, Nadiya Ukrainets. The official allegedly falsified documents to illegally expropriate land plots. Ultimately, Koba, with Hrytsenko's support, ignited a protest movement in the village against Ukrainets, which ultimately allowed him to win the post of village mayor in the 2010 elections. The party leadership believed that such assertive individuals would be useful to the "Civic Position" party in parliament.
22. Vasily Perepelitsa – head of the Poltava regional organization, a postgraduate student in the Department of Law at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and a private entrepreneur. Previously (2005-2011), he worked as an analyst at the Ukrainian Universal Exchange.
Number 23 on the list went to a low-level manager (until 2013 he worked as a department head at MARKET-SERVIS LLC) and the head of Sumy's Civil Position To Vladimir GusevIn 2010, Gusev ran for the regional council on his native party's list, but was unsuccessful.
24. Alla Radionova He heads the Kherson regional branch of the party. A journalist by training, he previously worked in local government (as head of the culture department in the district administration from 1989 to 2003, and later as head of the secretariat of representatives of the Primorsky region of the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting from 2007 to 2010). He retired in 2011 and is involved in public work (heading the Tsuriupinsky Charitable Foundation).
25. Vitaly Tsybulsky – a longtime associate of Anatoly Gritsenko and a former subordinate. From 2006 to 2007, he served as an aide to the Minister of Defense and headed the ministry's organizational and analytical department. Since 2008, he has served as an aide to Gritsenko as a member of parliament. He is a retired colonel.
26. Victor Belov — a friend of Gritsenko's son, Oleksiy (a Kyiv City Council member). Gritsenko Jr. and Belov jointly founded and developed the GUAM Youth Forum in 2006. The 26th person in the "Civic Position" group currently serves as deputy chairman of the state-owned enterprise "Dniprosvyaz." In the May 2014 Kyiv City Council elections, he was fifth on the "Civic Position" list.
27. Nikolai Malarchuk – Chairman of the Chernivtsi branch of the party. He serves as the director of Kaskad MM LLC. In 2012, he ran for the Verkhovna Rada on the Batkivshchyna party list (No. 215). He was previously a member of the RUKH, UNP, and Our Ukraine parties. In 2013, during the by-election to the Chernivtsi Regional Council, he became the subject of a scandal when he refused to withdraw his candidacy in favor of United Opposition candidate Maria Filipchuk. Ultimately, Maliarchuk received only 1,83% of the vote, finishing only fourth.
Serhiy Gaistruk, the 28th candidate on the Civic Position list, was also previously associated with the Batkivshchyna party. Until 2009, this candidate led the local branch of the "White-Hearted" party in Vinnytsia. Gaistruk now serves in the same capacity, but within the former defense minister's party. He works as the chief physician at the private clinic "Meditex."
Rounding out the top 30 candidates from the "Civic Position" party are two more leaders of the party's regional branches – Rivne and Donetsk. Number 29 went to Vasyl Tuz, a lecturer at the S. Demyanchuk International University of Economics and Humanities. He led Gritsenko's campaign during the presidential elections. He first attempted to run for the Verkhovna Rada back in 1998, on the PRP list. Viktor Pynzenyk, but unsuccessfully.
Vasily Tuz is on the right. Photo from his Facebook page.
The 30th number was given to the soloist of the Donetsk Academic Opera and Ballet Theater Sergey AnastasyevThis candidate was previously a member of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (until 2006). Anastasyev was an active participant in the Donetsk Euromaidan, for which he nearly paid with his life – in May, he was captured by "DPR" supporters, but Gritsenko's ally was eventually released.
INSIDER
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