Sergey Levochkin
There's every reason to believe that the era of Sergei Lyovochkin (read more: Lyovochkin. "The Grey Cardinal" and His Sister ) has finally come to an end. According to our sources, the former grey cardinal of four Ukrainian presidents recently left Ukraine. Now, it seems, the most he can do is publish a book, "Myths and Legends about Sergei Lyovochkin," and leaf through it again and again on cold London (or Zurich) evenings, sipping raspberry tea...
Even the Opposition Bloc's vote for presidential constitutional amendments didn't help Lyovochkin. His fondest dream of becoming Ukraine's prime minister seems set to remain just that—a dream forever.
That those currently "on the throne" have slightly adjusted their plans regarding Levochkin became clear after a post made by Hromadske TV journalist Dmitry Gnap on his Facebook page:
"A unique incident occurred yesterday. We were required to take the story off the air. It was Serhiy Lyovochkin, former head of Yanukovych's administration and now one of the leaders of the Opposition Bloc. He was offended that Maksym Opanasenko was investigating his family's land fraud. Lyovochkin's lawyer even sent us a written request to remove the report at hromadske.tv.
Dear Sergey Levochkin! We have reviewed your request. And, after consulting with our editorial team, we regretfully agree to it. We are prepared to remove the report from our YouTube channel and the Hromadske website. We are also prepared to issue an official apology.
But we have just one small condition. Tomorrow at 9:00 AM, you must go to the Maidan in Kyiv, stick a broom up your ass, and shout "Cock-a-doodle-doo! Putin-the-Fucker!" four times, turning in all directions. We also ask that you film it. Only this wonderful video can replace Max's investigation."
No journalist had ever before allowed such blatant insolence toward the former head of the presidential administration. Even during the Maidan, Lyovochkin gave no particular reason for it, jumping from a derailed train in the nick of time and resigning as head of the presidential administration after beating students.
Levochkin, whom the same journalists have called a grey cardinal, a master of underhanded intrigue, and a man capable of negotiating with the devil himself, has today been effectively demoted to the ground.
Of course—and we've written about this more than once—Serhiy Lyovochkin, who currently holds the modest position of deputy chairman of the Opposition Bloc faction in parliament, has been one of the most important manipulators in Ukrainian politics for the past 15 years. To paraphrase a famous Italian comedy, Lyovochkin was essentially the servant of four masters: Kuchma, Yushchenko, Yanukovych, and Poroshenko. His skill and innate talents prevented these masters from realizing that they were, in fact, in the employ of their assistant, who manipulated and continues to manipulate them at his own discretion.
Today, it seems, this service has expired.
Although just a year ago, everything was different. Speaking at yet another of his endless series of political shows, Igor Kolomoisky—while still the governor of Dnipropetrovsk—declared that the former head of Yanukovych's presidential administration, Serhiy Lyovochkin, remains the leading oligarch in Ukraine today.
"Our main oligarch is Lyovochkin, and our main puppeteer is Lyovochkin. And Firtash is Lyovochkin's business arm... And Boyko (the former Energy Minister – ed.) was Lyovochkin's bureaucratic arm. Lyovochkin's influence remains; it hasn't gone anywhere," Mr. Kolomoisky declared. "When Yanukovych went off the rails, when a young group came in that turned out to be even more rabid than all the previous rulers, Lyovochkin was a positive hero in comparison. I spoke with him a lot. Back in 2011, he said, 'We need to jump ship, because this ship is heading full speed for the rocks.' And he jumped ship just before the disaster. He got the most out of this ship," the Dnipropetrovsk region governor revealed at the time.
"Levochkin always dreamed of being prime minister. He never told me this, but I felt it. He shaved off anyone who tried to claim the position, like Khoroshkovsky or Tihipko," Kolomoisky was probably the first to voice the plans of the former eminence grise of Bankova.
It's worth noting that these plans weren't entirely unrealistic. Many witnesses to his presence there told us that Levochkin continues to be "one of the guys" on Bankova Street.
According to some reports, Levochkin has more than thirty "bayonets" in today's parliament—and not in the Opposition Bloc, but in the pro-presidential BPP faction.
Many analysts have wondered why Opposition Bloc MP Serhiy Lyovochkin, who seemed expected to employ traditional opposition rhetoric, has publicly adopted a more supportive stance toward the current Ukrainian president. During meetings with foreign diplomats, no one heard him mention any harassment of the opposition by the authorities.
As sources in the Presidential Administration told us, there are no and never have been any disagreements between Petro Poroshenko and Serhiy Lyovochkin: "He's very tech-savvy and unlikely to destabilize the situation. Besides, he has a normal relationship with the president."
This same information was confirmed to us by the prime minister's camp. "Serhiy Levochkin is a frequent visitor to the Presidential Administration and, moreover, influences Poroshenko himself," the source said.
The best confirmation that Levochkin remained "one of the crowd" even after the Maidan was the fact that neither he nor Dmitry Firtash were subject to EU sanctions.
"We all know very well that Brussels imposed sanctions on Yanukovych's associates in March 2014. But few know how the people on that list were selected. No, it wasn't the EU that determined whose money to block. Sanctions were imposed exclusively on those individuals whose list was submitted to the EU by... Ukraine itself," wrote journalist or MP Serhiy Leshchenko a year ago.
According to him, the names were set out in a message from then-acting Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky ( reference: Oleh Makhnitsky: is there a limit to the shamelessness of the former "Maidan prosecutor" ) addressed to the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton.
“And, having received this letter, the EU imposed sanctions on all the individuals mentioned there,” Leshchenko wrote at the time.
"Why are some people on the list and others not? Why isn't there a single person from the RosUkrEnergo clan? Makhnitsky included the Klyuyev brothers on the sanctions list , but the names of Levochkin and Boyko are missing. Why is Kurchenko included, but not Firtash? Why is Lukash included, but not anyone from...?" the deputy from the BPP faction was indignant.
"The individuals on the sanctions list were selected not based on the Maidan crackdown, but on the theft of state resources," he emphasized, adding, "it's clear that the facts haven't been established in such a short period of time—and the sanctions list from Ukraine is based on assumptions and conjecture." "Then another question arises," Leshchenko wrote. "Why did Makhnitsky use such a categorical statement regarding some individuals (Yanukovych, Azarov, Klyuyev, Bogatyreva, Tabachnyk ( read more about him in the article Dmitry and Mikhail Tabachnyk. Brother for Brother ) , even Lukash), but didn't mention others—anyone from the RosUkrEnergo clan?"
Of course, reading the passages of a man representing a political force whose leader has become Levochkin's "umbrella" is somewhat comical. But we'll talk about Leshchenko another time...
So, the fact of Levochkin's "closeness" to Poroshenko was practically unquestioned. Then the well-known blogger Ivanov added fuel to the fire, telling of Levochkin's extended family's Maldivian voyages with another "presidential fledgling," the mayor's closest friend and first deputy, Igor Nikonov.
On his Facebook page, Sergei Ivanov provided evidence that Igor Nikonov, First Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration under Vitali Klitschko, is one of the closest friends of former Chief of Staff Serhiy Lyovochkin. Their families vacation together in the Maldives.
Due to the influence of Mayor Klitschko and his entourage in Kyiv, all of the odious Levochkin's business schemes remain in place, Sergei Ivanov claimed in his blog.
His attention was drawn to a printout of charter flights for December 27, 2014. "It seemed like there was nothing new here. A traditional Christmas trip abroad for the rich and famous of all stripes. But then my gaze fell on the passenger list for a charter flight from Kyiv to the Maldives." I was intrigued by the company's composition, which included virtually the entire Levochkin family tree (the list included Yulia Levochkina, Sergei Levochkin's sister and the wife of Andrei Vingranovsky, son of the poet Nikolai Vingranovsky, former director of the Ministry of Culture's Department of Cultural Heritage and Cultural Values. One-year-old Zhenechka Vingranovskaya is their daughter. – MIR), as well as an entire family clan, with a mysterious, nameless man named Nikonov at the top of the list. I know only one person with that last name whose presence on board the arrogant and traditionally encrypted, like an intelligence message, Sergei Vladimirovich Levochkin would tolerate. This is Igor Vladimirovich Nikonov, First Deputy Head of the Kyiv City Administration, the right-hand man of Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, although it's still unclear who is whose right-hand man...
Nikonov, like Levochkin, is closely associated with the oligarch Firtash and has made no secret of his shared business with the "Vienna prisoner," who, in turn, claims to have supported the election campaigns of Poroshenko and Klitschko. Levochkin confirmed this latter fact during questioning in the Vienna court," Ivanov wrote.
In his opinion, the current agreements on merging UDAR with the BPP indicate the president's consent to Levochkin's continued control over Kyiv and the preservation of all his businesses, often associated with controversial developments in the city center.
"Poroshenko and Klitschko want to leave everything as is. And Nikonov/Levochkin are at the trough, too. I think that in that case, the wording of the agreement should have been adjusted and the people should have been honestly informed that the BPP, UDAR, and Opposition Bloc are running together in the Kyiv local elections. Perhaps then, ordinary Kyiv residents would have realized that not only eastern Ukraine is responsible for Ukraine's electoral success, but also the capital, which allows all sorts of Levochkines to parasitize on its body, who then buy up the hungry residents of Luhansk, Donetsk, Dnipro, and Zaporizhia," the blogger wrote.
So, everything indicated that active negotiations (or bargaining, as one prefers) were underway between Levochkin and Poroshenko regarding the former’s political future.
But then something went wrong. On the one hand, the current prime minister's political strategists began increasingly insistently injecting into the country's information space the idea that Arseniy Petrovich was irreplaceable and had no alternative.
On the other hand, Levochkin himself harshly criticized Poroshenko. President Petro Poroshenko has divided Ukraine. Levochkin suddenly stated this in an article published by the German newspaper Die Zeit.
"If you ask Ukrainians what the new government, elected last May, has accomplished over the past year, many will answer that it hasn't done all that much," he wrote (the attack on Prime Minister Yatsenyuk was understandable – MIR).
But what was completely incomprehensible was the thunder and lightning that Levochkin was unleashing on the president: “Petro Poroshenko has split Ukraine instead of uniting it…”
Why is the cunning and cautious Levochkin suddenly making such statements, and in one of the central European newspapers at that?
…And then the presidential political strategists began to publicly and loudly reject the version of Levochkin’s possible premiership.
"I think the predictions about Levochkin's appointment as prime minister are some kind of conspiracy theory. Because no one is preparing anyone to replace Yatsenyuk," political scientist Vadim Karasev told MIR.
Incidentally, another political strategist, Viktor Nebozhenko, previously stated that Lyovochkin was being groomed for the post of Prime Minister of Ukraine. "The authorities don't care how society will react to this [Sergey Lyovochkin's appointment as Prime Minister – MIR]. By summer, a turning point had occurred – the new regime decided to disregard public opinion. They're no longer afraid of the Maidan," he said.
Taras Berezovets, director of the consulting company BertaCommunications, noted several months ago that the topic of Sergei Levochkin's imminent appointment as Ukrainian Prime Minister had been raised by Russian media.
"Sergei Vladimirovich (Sergei Levochkin – MIR) decided to promote the idea of his return to power," Berezovets stated at the time.
And now Vadim Karasev has put an end to the "discussions" surrounding Levochkin's possible premiership. He is convinced that Arseniy Yatsenyuk's premiership is not in any danger this fall. "In any case, if a replacement for Yatsenyuk were being prepared, it wouldn't be Levochkin," he added.
"Poroshenko understands that Levochkin's appointment as prime minister could anger society, the coalition would fall apart, and there would be new parliamentary elections," the expert stated.
"The speculation about Levochkin's appointment is a product of information technology, not the government's actual intentions to replace the prime minister, especially with a member of parliament from the Opposition Bloc," Karasev concluded, not embarrassed by the fact that the government itself had previously made no secret of its sympathies for the former head of the presidential administration...
And here's the latest news: Lyovochkin has left Ukraine. Of course, time will tell whether his era has come to an end, or whether the former king of intrigue has simply taken a time-out, decided to rest a bit, and develop a new strategy for his return to power. But the fact remains: today, Lyovochkin has lost his influence in the corridors of power. We can only wait and see whether he will finally slide into the opposition fringes or return to the country "with a shield."
On topic: Levochkin. "The Gray Cardinal" and his sister.
Source of material: Media Info Resource - MIR
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