On September 5, local elections officially began in our country. They will be quite heated, perhaps even more so than last year's Verkhovna Rada elections. This is unsurprising, given the certain chances of coming to power for medium and small parties. These parties won't have to compete for votes across Ukraine, but will only need to woo the trusting voters of their regions with food rations and financial handouts, coupled with promises of a "bright future."
The "New Faces" party is one such example. Since mid-spring, its billboards have filled the streets of Kyiv and towns in the Kyiv region, letting voters know that such a party exists! It had been completely unknown for the previous three years of its existence. But now, "New Faces" is immediately promising to make Ukraine a successful state as soon as they "replace the old, lazy politicians in government positions at all levels." Indeed, there are plenty of young and forward-thinking individuals among these figures.
The same party leader, 34-year-old Volodymyr Karplyuk, currently holds the post of mayor of Irpin. What other mayor in our country could boast of owning nearly 7,3 square meters of real estate (67 apartments and 4 country houses), as well as almost 3,5 hectares of land! Moreover, all of this was purchased, according to Karplyuk himself, in 2013 alone. An incredibly successful year, which also brought him over 21,2 million hryvnias in total income (over $2,6 million at the then exchange rate). One might believe his version of "being engaged in entrepreneurial activity," if not for one "but": from 2010-2012, Karplyuk served as deputy mayor of Bucha, and therefore, by law, could not own his own business. But that's by law...
The so-called "Bucha scheme," a multi-year scheme of illegally allocating land plots to front men through city council decisions, has gained widespread notoriety not only in the Kyiv region but throughout Ukraine. It was orchestrated by Karplyuk and his godfather, the longtime mayor of Bucha (from 1998 to the present), Anatoliy Fedoruk. Residential complexes were built on land allocated, according to documents, exclusively for "personal farming." The construction of the buildings and the subsequent sale of apartments was carried out by the company "Budregionalinvest," whose owners are listed as Lyudmila Fedoruk and Larisa Karplyuk, the spouses of Anatoliy Fedoruk and Volodymyr Karplyuk. This is a "family business," in which not one, but two mayors are now involved. As a result, the income of these two separate Ukrainian families has increased significantly.
Karplyuk's entire 10-month tenure as mayor has been rocked by high-profile scandals. These include permission to sell (at a deliberately undervalued price) several administrative buildings in the city center, followed by their subsequent demolition to make way for more high-rise buildings. There's also permission to transfer half a hectare of the local Dubki Park for the construction of a restaurant and parking lot. And there are attempts to demolish the buildings of the Territorial Center for Social Services (which spent nearly 300,000 hryvnias on renovations last year), the Interschool Scientific and Production Center (which provides specialized education to students from five comprehensive schools), and the Ecological and Technical Center for Schoolchildren and Youth Creativity, which the local community has so far managed to defend against the encroachments of their overly "active" mayor.
Irpin activists even filed a complaint with the Kyiv Regional State Administration (ORA), highlighting 11 of Karplyuk's most scandalous land management decisions. But a special working group found no violations on his part, as Dmytro Khrystyuk, deputy chairman of the Kyiv Regional State Administration and head of the task force, cheerfully reported on August 27. It couldn't have been otherwise, since Khrystyuk became head of the regional branch of the Irpin mayor's party on August 25. And to "appease" city residents, 6 million hryvnias were suddenly found in the regional budget for repairs to the Irpin sewer system. Of course, the newly elected head of the Kyiv region's "new face" (Khrystyuk) had nothing to do with this. It's just a coincidence, nothing more.
Khrystyuk, like his party boss Karplyuk, can hardly be called a "new face," but rather a representative of the "Prysyazhnyuk era." From June to November 2010, he served as deputy chairman of the Baryshiv District State Administration (RSA) of the Kyiv region (under the "orange defector" Volodymyr Gorbyk), and from November 2010 to December 2012, he headed the Baryshiv District Council. While serving in the RSA, Khrystyuk, for example, stubbornly "ignored" how, in the village of Podillya, threats and violence were used to seize over 3000 hectares of prime agricultural land from local farmers, and how a bandit group effectively occupied Podillya. Well, it's embarrassing to even recall the absolute loyalty of the district council headed by Khrystyuk to both the Kyiv City State Administration, then controlled by the Party of Regions, and personally to the now-fugitive former governor of the Kyiv region, Prysyazhnyuk. Well, perhaps we can recall how, in an October 2012 issue of the weekly "2000 City," the Communist Party of Ukraine warmly and heartily congratulated Khrystyuk on his birthday.
Then came more than two and a half years in UDAR, which he left at the end of August of this year. Furthermore, he lured a number of senior officials from the regional UDAR organization with him. This move was hardly honorable, but Khrystyuk's decision is understandable. Considering how many former "regionals," many who had previously supported and closely collaborated with the Party of Regions, have now gathered under the banner of the "New Faces" party.
A noteworthy fact: Khrystyuk heads the Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Federation of Ukraine, which is a member of the World Mixed Martial Arts Association (WMMAA). Its headquarters are in St. Petersburg, and it's no secret that the Russian FSB actively "protects" the Association's affairs. Khrystyuk, however, remains the WMMAA's first vice president. He was not re-elected, and he himself shows no particular desire to leave the governing body of an openly pro-Russian organization, despite tirelessly publicly calling himself a "patriot," a "true Ukrainian," and so on.
A reasonable question arises: what kind of party can Karplyuk, Khrystyuk, and their ilk build? It's naive to expect that if they come to power, "Novi Oblychya" will build regional infrastructure, repair roads, develop small businesses, and so on. "Sawing up" local budgets and "carving up" land—those are their two main goals, and that's what they're good at. Voters should keep this in mind as they head to the polls on October 26.
SKELET-info
Subscribe to our channels in Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, VC — Only new faces from the section CRYPT!