Roman Zvarych: Without a diploma and conscience
This man, easily recognizable by his ineradicable New York accent, lost his mandate ten years ago—along with his nonexistent diploma. Afterward, Roman Zvarych dropped out of public politics for a long time, so much so that many Ukrainians assumed he had gone back to America. Imagine their surprise when Zvarych's face materialized behind Andriy Biletsky, the leader of one of the most notorious movements in post-Maidan Ukraine. But what could the union of an incorrigible liar and a theorist of the "white race" in the guise of Ukrainian national patriotism produce?
Roman Zvarych. Biography of Pinocchio
Unlike the international influx of "professionals" from the United States, Poland, and Georgia, who were welcomed with open arms in Ukraine in 2014-2015, the first wave of "American Ukrainians" of the 90s was not particularly enthusiastically received in the homeland of their ancestors. They were not offered ministerial positions, they were not considered great reformers, and indeed, many saw them as CIA agents. This was especially true of Roman Zvarych, whose murky biography and peculiar political views gave his opponents ample reason to ask: who is he really and why did he come to Ukraine?
Indeed, Zvarych's entire biography before 1991 is based solely on his own stories, not all of which are true—as proven by the scandal surrounding his diploma (which was never found). There's even a theory that Zvarych is an adventurer and swindler who came to post-Soviet Ukraine as a political "carpetbagger," and for this purpose fabricated a suitable "resume." Another theory is that Zvarych is an American resident and "agent of influence" who lied so much about his past that he mixed up his legends with reality. However, the lack of a coherent and plausible version of his origins is Roman Zvarych's only problem; in all other respects, he has been quite successful.
If his American passport was genuine, then according to Skelet.Org, Khvarych Roman Mikhailovich was born on November 20, 1953 in the city of Yonkers (New York State, a northern suburb of New York), where many descendants of immigrants from Western Ukraine live - for this reason, Yonkers has been a sister city of Ternopil since 1991.
But these are the only reliable facts from his early biography – and then the confusing legends begin.
Thus, according to the legend "Zvarych the Lawyer," his father, Zvarych Mikhail Petrovich (born 1926), was a "born American" and millionaire, the owner of the cottage construction company "Romhor" and the rental company "Stemar" since the 60s. Roman Zvarych also has a brother, Bogdan, who allegedly served as vice president of a certain "Citibank." However, according to the legend "Zvarych the Nationalist," his father, Mikhail Petrovich, has a somewhat different biography:
Roman Zvarych: Without a diploma and conscience
It's worth noting that the village of Stolovichi doesn't exist on any available maps of the Peremyshlyansky district of the Lviv region, and in 1942, his father was 16, not 14. Furthermore, it's completely unclear what kind of "rebels" hid in the forest in 1942 and harassed the Nazis to the point that they decided to arrest a young boy carrying lunch for unknown heroes in a basket. And the Nazis aren't entirely clear either: the Lviv region in 1942 was the deepest rear and territory of "Distrikt Galizien," and patrol duty "at the edge of the forest" was then carried out exclusively by local order police and the Ukrainian-recruited security police, who detained all manner of suspicious individuals. Meanwhile, the police force was full of OUN-B members (Banderites), who could only consider their rivals, the "Melnykites," suspicious. But here's the rub: sending someone to a concentration camp for helping the Melnykites (and this was only done through the German city Gestapo) was unrealistic, because the Melnykites collaborated with the Germans even more closely than the Banderaites. So who did young Mikhail Zvarych bring food to—and did he bring it at all? But then his son's imagination ran wild:
Roman Zvarych: Without a diploma and conscience
Here, Roman Zvarych was let down by a basic ignorance of the material side of things: the fact is that the British MI5 (Military Intelligence) is a counterintelligence service, and therefore never deployed paratroopers, but in 1946, it was actively engaged in combating the Communist Party of Great Britain and the so-called "Cambridge Five." Therefore, the involvement of Zvarych's father in covert operations by Western intelligence agencies also raises serious doubts. This legend ends with a smooth transition to the version of a millionaire father who moved to the United States in 1949 "with five cents in his pocket," and a few years later, he already had his own construction company. However, it is reliably known that Mikhail Zvarych was closely acquainted with several leaders of the Ukrainian diaspora (possibly as a sponsor).
Roman Zvarych also presented in a very intricate manner the biography of his venerable mother, Stefania Prokopovna Melnichuk (born in 1933), whom he mentioned precisely under this name.
Did she really refuse to take her husband's surname? Ukrainian journalists never asked Zvarych this question. However, he repeatedly told them that his mother, originally from the Chernivtsi region, fled to Czechoslovakia on foot (!) in 1944 with her mother (Zvarych's grandmother), fleeing the evil Bolsheviks. And in 1946-48 (before emigrating to the United States), they allegedly lived in Germany, next door to Stepan Bandera himself, who, to quote Zvarych, "often played with my mother, rocking her on his lap when she was little." However, it's worth remembering that Stefania Melnychuk was already 13-15 years old at the time, and being on the lap of the leader of Ukrainian nationalism would have been ambiguous. It seems her son simply lied about this too, as part of his clumsy cover story of "Zvarych the Nationalist."
Roman Zvarych
Еще больше небылиц Роман Зварыч нарассказывал о себе самом. В частности, он утверждал, что в подростковом возрасте нередко дрался с местными чернокожими парнями (рядом то был Гарлем), причем в интервью он назвал их «неграми», что весьма странно для человека, выросшего в США – если, конечно, он не расист. В его биографии говорится, что он обучался в католической школе Йонкерса – что необычно для сына миллионера, поскольку такие школы там являются самыми дешевыми из частных, и зачастую обучают детей из малоимущих и неблагополучных семей.
Then followed a ridiculous tale about how, in 1969, he was a seventeen-year-old boy (in reality, only fifteen) and attended Zbigniew Brzezinski's lectures at Columbia University, where he caught Brzezinski's eye. However, only child prodigies study at that age, and certainly not in Sovietology departments. Zvarych's biography states that he attended school until 1971, then Manhattan College, and only in 1976 did he enroll at Columbia University (fortunately, it's just a few bus stops from Yonkers).
This same biography claimed that in 1981, Roman Zvarych allegedly earned a master's degree and then defended his PhD dissertation on the topic of "Ontological Foundations of Plato's Ethics"—a very odd topic for the Sovietology department! He then allegedly continued working at Columbia University as a full professor. He allegedly rented an apartment with a view of Central Park, paying for it with his professor's salary, sometimes with his father's money, sometimes by working as a taxi driver—Zvarych's legend constantly changed from interview to interview. However, after the "diploma scandal" of 2005, Zvarych claimed that he never held a master's degree or PhD, that he only had some "equivalent academic level" (what this means is unknown to science), and that in reality he only worked at the University as someone's assistant—and for free, for "academic pleasure."
But journalists have established that Roman Zvarych was expelled from the university in 1978, after which he spent several years hanging around somewhere.
Moreover, an inquiry to Manhattan College about Zvarych's bachelor's degree in law also returned a negative response! In short, Mr. Zvarych lied his ass off, like the fairytale Pinocchio, and got away with it all. This is unsurprising, given that his old acquaintances from the "Ukrainian movement" were in power at the time.
According to the "Zvarych the Lawyer" legend, from 1983 to 1991 he taught political theory, philosophy, and legal theory at New York University—and this was recorded in his biography when Zvarych served as Ukraine's Minister of Justice. But according to the "Zvarych the Nationalist" legend, during this same period, he, along with Kateryna Chumachenko (the future wife of Viktor Yushchenko) and the Stetsko couple, was actively involved in the World Anti-Communist League. He then moved to Germany, where, as an international relations assistant, he cultivated the widowed Yaroslava Stetsko (who became the head of the OUN), telling her stories of how Stepan Bandera used to bounce his mother, Stefania, on his lap. There is an opinion that this legend is the most true: supposedly, Mikhail Zvarych, trying to find a place for his idle son (who really loved the good life at his father's expense), through his acquaintances in the diaspora sent him to the "central branch of the OUN" to engage in politics - that is, to travel to conferences and prepare materials for congresses.
Yaroslava Stetsko at the Anti-Communist League congress, 80s
However, it appears Roman Zvarych soon became disillusioned with politics and the "anti-Bolshevik movement," as in 1989 he reappeared in America, where he found a job at the retraining and professional education courses at New York University, where he worked for two years—a position later confirmed by university spokesman Josh Taylor. He clarified that Zvarych worked as a "part-time lecturer" (part-time, evening classes), and that the specific nature of his work did not require a higher education. This suggests that Roman Zvarych wasn't teaching legal theory there, but something more basic—for example, teaching beginning students how to best roll up Whatman paper.
Roman Zvarych: Career in Ukraine
Roman Zvarych even drew his wife, Svetlana Viktorovna Kovalevskaya (Zvarych), into his fantasies. In one interview, he claimed to have met her in 1983 in Poland, where, as a representative of the OUN, he met a courier for the "Ukrainian underground"—Svetlana. Three years later, they had a son, Bohdan, whose existence Roman Zvarych allegedly learned of only in the early 90s. In fact, the only reliable detail in this melodrama is Bohdan Zvarych's year of birth (1986), while Svetlana Zvarych's detailed biography is shrouded in mystery. It is only known that she was born in 1963 and graduated from the history department of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 1988 with a degree in ethnography. She took academic leave during the birth of her son, Bohdan. Whether she was a liaison for some underground organization, whether she traveled to Poland in the 80s, and where she actually met Roman Zvarych remained "off the record." However, rumors circulated that Roman and Svetlana only met in the early 90s, and that Bogdan was re-registered as Zvarych's son so that the child would eventually become an American citizen.
Some have called Roman Zvarych's move to Ukraine "the placement of a CIA agent," but there is a simpler version.
The fact is that in June 1991, Yaroslava Stetsko arrived in Ukraine, timing her visit to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of the "Ukrainian State" in German-occupied Lviv. Reportedly, her "liaison assistant," Roman Zvarych, also arrived with her. He had regained his job with the OUN: to create a political party in Ukraine on the basis of that organization (Stetsko herself, due to her age, was no longer able to do this). Thus, in 1992, the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN) was founded. It essentially remained a dwarf party and a political club of a few hundred active members, although it received substantial funding from the Ukrainian diaspora in Europe and America. Clearly, Zvarych lacked the talent to develop a mass party. However, he greatly enjoyed Ukraine, where he saw many opportunities for himself. At least, with his money (or his father's) and his political status, Zvarych immediately joined the ranks of the Ukrainian elite—and that was far more interesting than teaching advanced training courses in New York! And ahead of him lay the prospect of becoming a businessman and entering government.
His relationship with power, however, didn't go smoothly for a long time. First, Zvarych had to become a Ukrainian citizen: this didn't happen until January 16, 1995. In doing so, he renounced his US citizenship, becoming the first American in the world to exchange his passport with the eagle for one with the trident. Many saw this as a self-sacrificing act out of love for Ukraine and an unprecedented display of honesty—after all, Ukrainian politicians typically prefer to hold two or three citizenships, and nothing would force them to renounce their Israeli or Swiss citizenships. The secret to this "self-sacrifice" is simple: Roman Zvarych is a born American and can easily restore his US citizenship if he so chooses.
In 1993, Zvarych created the "Elections-94" press center (which he himself was unable to participate in). Then, together with his wife, Svetlana Viktorovna, he founded the "Center for Democratic Initiatives" (1994), where she became the editor-in-chief of the information and analysis service, and the "Demos" Center for Democratic Reforms (1995), where Roman Mikhailovich himself became the director of the analytical and information service. They never explained why they needed to create two identical clone organizations—perhaps to double their Western grants.
Furthermore, while still a member of the hopeless KUN, in December 1995, Roman Zvarych joined the "central leadership" of the People's Movement (NRU), personally recruited by Vyacheslav Chornovol. The NRU members quickly began to gnaw at each other like spiders in a jar, and the first to fall out were Roman Zvarych and Sergei Odarych, who told journalists the following:
The apotheosis came with the split in the People's Republic of Ukraine (NRU) in February 1999, exacerbated by the imminent death of Vyacheslav Chornovil (March 25, 1999). By then, Roman Zvarych was already a people's deputy, having been elected in 1998 on the Rukh list (No. 24). Immediately after the split, Zvarych switched from the NRU faction to the PRP "Reforms-Congress" faction, but a year later he returned to the NRU faction, which was led by Gennady Udovenko. Interestingly, when Roman Zvarych actively participated in the "right-wing coup" in the Rada (1999), then-Speaker Oleksandr Tkachenko publicly called him a "CIA agent"—an accusation that Zvarych took great offense and went to court to demand a retraction.
But 1999 brought Zvarych more than just exciting political adventures. That same year, his wife, Svetlana, left her job at Democratic Initiatives and started a new family business.
Thus, the Zvarychs acquired SIM-Agro LLC (co-founded by Svetlana Zvarych), Transit Oil LLC—where Svetlana Zvarych served as deputy general director from 1999 to 2006—and Ukrainian National Information Systems NPF—of which Svetlana Zvarych has also been the founder and director since 2006. After all, Roman Mikhailovich, who went into big politics, was personally prohibited by law from engaging in business.
So, since 2000, Roman Zvarych actively supported Viktor Yushchenko, and during Yushchenko's tenure as prime minister, the Zvarych family business began to thrive by re-exporting Russian oil to Europe (OOO Transit Oil). This was, of course, more profitable than begging for grants for the Democratic Initiatives. In 2002, Roman Zvarych was elected to the Rada as a member of the presidium of "Our Ukraine" and immediately received a position as deputy chairman of the Committee on European Integration and a permanent member of the Verkhovna Rada delegation to PACE. The latter also helped the Zvarychs conduct their re-export business directly with European partners, without resorting to intermediaries.
Roman Zvarych in "Our Ukraine"
And so the first Maidan triumphed, thanks in part to Roman Zvarych, who organized a group of lawyers who challenged Yanukovych's victory in the second round of elections in the Supreme Court. It was this penchant for litigation (common among Americans) that earned him the image of a great lawyer—and one with American universities to boot. Ultimately, in February 2005, Roman Zvarych became Ukraine's Minister of Justice, and his brief tenure at the ministry was marked by two high-profile scandals. First, having barely begun his tenure, Zvarych resigned immediately in protest against the Cabinet's decision to ban the re-export of oil from Ukraine. There was reason to be upset: at stake was a contract to re-export 3 million tons of Russian oil to Slovakia!
The Zvarych couple began blaming Ihor Yeremeyev, a deputy of the People's Party (a splinter of the old Rukh), for allegedly wanting to use the oil for a VAT scam. And despite the fact that the re-export ban was considered in Ukraine's national interests, President Yushchenko sided with the Zvarychs—it was said that Kateryna Chumachenko persuaded him to do so. However, after this incident, the Zvarychs' oil business began to wind down.
Then a new scandal erupted, exposing the inaccuracy of Roman Zvarych's official biography and his lies in numerous interviews. In the spring of 2005, Ukrainska Pravda asked Zvarych to show documents confirming his academic degrees. A confused Zvarych admitted he had none, and then claimed his "doctoral degrees" were merely honorary titles.
Then he was asked to show his diploma, to which Zvarych replied that... he had lost it. Journalists contacted Columbia University and discovered that the new minister not only lacked a diploma, but also a higher education! Zvarych and his "lost" diploma became a meme, mocked throughout Ukraine, and many expected his voluntary resignation. Once again, Viktor Yushchenko came to Roman Mykhailovych's aid, delivering a long speech about the "spirit of the law" and how a diploma doesn't make a man. The minister's blatant violation of the law and shameless lies were simply overlooked, and this greatly tarnished the reputation of the new government. And the government, disregarding public opinion, appointed Roman Zvarych deputy chairman of the National Commission for Strengthening Democracy and Establishing the Rule of Law. He also became a board member of the International Renaissance Foundation (the Ukrainian branch of the Soros Foundation, thanks to whose "grant-eaters" Yushchenko came to power).
Zvarych resigned only in September 2005, along with the entire Cabinet of Ministers, and, ironically, became head of the legal department of the Our Ukraine electoral bloc. In the 2006 parliamentary elections, Roman Zvarych was No. 26 on the Our Ukraine list, and immediately after the elections, he began building a coalition of "orange forces." When the process reached an impasse, he explored the possibility of forming a "broad coalition" with the Party of Regions on behalf of Yushchenko. He was rewarded for this: on August 4, 2006, he was reappointed Minister of Justice, and in October, he became a member of the High Council of Justice of Ukraine—despite his odious reputation as a "lawyer without a diploma."
At the same time, the Zvarychs were developing a new and promising business: their company, Ukrainian National Information Systems (UNIS) (33% owned by Svetlana Zvarych), began receiving government contracts for software to protect electronic document management. This supported their family even after Roman Mykhailovych resigned again in December 2006 and no longer held high positions. The scale of their activities was eloquently demonstrated by another scandal that erupted in July 2008: a tender for a service necessary for the creation of a secure State Voter Registry was being decided, and a sum of approximately 10 million hryvnia (US$2 million at the then exchange rate) was at stake. UNIS attempted to win the tender, but the Central Election Commission gave preference to the firm Atlas. Roman Zvarych then publicly stated that Atlas was linked to Russian entities and that "the registry would be manipulated by the Kremlin," and then accused the Central Election Commission of exceeding budget expenditures by more than 2,5 times. Two years later, another scandal erupted around UNIS: Deputy Viktor Korzh accused the firm of embezzling budget funds on an especially large scale.
By 2011, Roman Zvarych was already deeply in opposition, cultivating Arseniy Yatsenyuk, while UNIS continued to be embroiled in scandals. Another story was astonishing in the brazenness of the swindlers, who were ultimately never identified.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Roman Zvarych
So, private entrepreneurs Khaikin Mikhail Lvovich and Zhornitsky Yuriy Natanovich, the owners of premises at 17 Simferopolskaya Street (Dnepropetrovsk), which the company "UNIS" had rented from them for years, were sued, claiming that the lease agreement was invalid from the outset. The claim stems from Svetlana Zvarych's claim that her signature on the lease agreement was not hers—a claim supported by a report from the Kyiv Research Institute of Forensic Expertise. Moreover, she allegedly didn't even know it was her signature! Therefore, Khaikin and Zhornitsky must return to the defrauded woman all the money they had secured for the lease!
The spectacle then continued in the city's Commercial Court, where Khaikin and Zhornitsky argued that the firm UNIS had been operating in the rented premises for years, and, more importantly, paying rent! It's logical: if a company pays rent for offices (receipts were attached), then it's renting them! But then the plaintiff claimed that the rent was being improperly transferred by UNIS's former chief accountant, Olga Osipenko, who was thus defrauding the firm and Svetlana Zvarych personally. The chief accountant would have been in jail if the case hadn't been reviewed in the appellate court, which found the claim invalid and an attempt at fraud. But as soon as the case smelled of criminal charges against the owners of UNIS, it was quickly dropped, and the plaintiff-swindler was now revealed to be "persons unknown." How could this be? Svetlana Zvarych must have quickly discovered that her signature on the statement of claim was also fake!
The Zvarychs' scandalous business brought them a handsome income: their estates in the villages of Lesniki and Pashkovka were impressive in size. In fact, Zvarych himself boasted to journalists of his four-story house, "150 square meters per floor," back in 2006. Since then, he has expanded his holdings even further, including both residential real estate and an impressive stable.
"Above all!"
Since 2007, Roman Zvarych has all but disappeared from public politics, and only his defection to the BYuT in July 2009 drew mixed reactions from voters, who called him a "political rat." However, information has emerged that the real reason Zvarych "ditched" Viktor Yushchenko, who had been trying to entice him for so many years, was his wife's business. UNIS took control of the State Financial Monitoring Service, becoming the monopoly seller of all the digital signature keys needed to submit electronic documents—and began jacking up the prices for its keys! In 2010, Roman Zvarych even tried to establish contact with the Party of Regions (and why would he be any worse? Petro Poroshenko, who became Minister of Economic Development?), but he failed to do so, and so he turned to Arseniy Yatsenyuk. However, even the United Opposition received Zvarych with a lukewarm reception, not even including him among the minor "leaders." Thus, in the colossal redistribution of positions and schemes that began after Euromaidan, Zvarych was completely left out, and even in the snap parliamentary elections of 2014, he received a poor 84th place.
And then Roman Zvarych… enlisted in the Azov Battalion. Of course, Zvarych didn't take part in combat, and only showed off a little in his new camouflage at a rear base somewhere. He talked about NATO standards, opened some "training centers," and hatched Napoleonic plans.
But Zvarych had no intention of pursuing a career as a battalion commander in his old age, instead becoming Andriy Biletsky's political guardian. And while the transformation of Kharkiv's Patriot battalion into a battalion, and then the Azov regiment, was achieved thanks to the patronage of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov, who covered for Biletsky (and used the services of his "national titushki") during his time as governor, Roman Zvarych had a significant hand in the creation of the so-called Azov Civil Corps. And he was one of the first to exploit it for his own ends. As early as the summer of 2014, numerous donation boxes appeared in Kyiv "in aid of heroic defenders" bearing Azov emblems and the seals of a certain "Charitable Foundation for Educational Innovations." Journalists discovered that this foundation is owned by the Zvarych family and has been claiming to be a volunteer organization since 2014. However, there is no information that the collected funds were sent to their intended destination or spent on purchasing equipment for Azov. Skelet.Org could not be found.
And there's more to come. According to some sources, the money was collected by Zvarych Jr., Bohdan, who had a passion for cars since his teenage years and personally tuned them. His passion would not have attracted any media attention if not for the events surrounding the Kyiv plant "ATEK" (formerly "Red Excavator"). This enterprise had been deliberately driven into bankruptcy for a long time, not by the plant itself, but by the land it occupied, over which Kyiv's largest developers were competing. In fact, their dispute prevented any one person from taking over the enterprise. And then, in November 2014, "ATEK" was seized by young men in camouflage uniforms bearing the recognizable emblems of the Azov Civil Corps, who declared that the enterprise was being confiscated by "patriots" for the needs of Ukraine's defense – supposedly to repair equipment for the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO). According to ATEK CEO Igor Usenok, the corporate raid was carried out by people acting in the interests of the Charitable Foundation for Educational Innovations and other Zvarych family firms, which are also involved in the division of the enterprise. In other words, it was pure corporate raiding.
After the enterprise was seized, it was announced that Azov would establish its own base on its territory, which would also include a repair shop.
But apparently, this wasn't enough to justify the illegal takeover of the plant, and so in the summer of 2015, the "Azovets" project emerged: a unique heavy armored vehicle based on the T-64, designed by "Azov patriots and volunteers," assembled in the ATEK workshop, and then being prepared for testing and mass production. The scam was based on the idea that no one would dare fire the "patriots" who were producing "unique equipment for the ATO" at the plant—not even the president himself! And the plan paid off. So, having brought an engineering vehicle (an armored bulldozer) based on the T-64 to the plant, the Azov artisans began welding a new armored hull onto it and slapping on a "combat module" with a twin-link GSh-23 mount, brought back from the front lines. As the saying goes, a "wunderwaffe." This process was accompanied by numerous scandals: the vehicle was cobbled together from whatever was available—that is, old hardware, electronics from Chinese toys, and optics from an intercom. It was claimed that the finished vehicle would cost $5 million (almost as much as the Israeli Merkava-4 and the German Leopard-2), and that the state should allocate funds for mass production. As we know, the venture came to nothing: the tank was sent "for testing" and disappeared, but the Azov base at the captured ATEK remained.
So, during this six-month saga of creating the Azovets, expensive cars, some in a state of cosmetic repair, were repeatedly spotted next to it in the factory workshop. This led to two logical explanations: either these were stolen cars, or Bogdan Zvarych had set up his own tuning center in the ATEK workshop. Then it would be entirely understandable why the Azovets took so long to build and was so crudely made.
wunderwaffe Azovets
Incidentally, sources also reported that in 2014-2015, Bohdan Zvarych was formally listed as a National Guard volunteer, but never reported to a military unit. Perhaps assigned to the same Azov Regiment, he "defended the homeland" in Kyiv by installing neon lights on sports cars.
Meanwhile, his father was working to create a full-fledged political party based on the Azov Civil Corps. This was allegedly a personal request from Arsen Avakov, who, after the political collapse of the People's Front, needed a new, promising party capable of entering parliament. Judging by the results, Roman Zvarych failed to achieve this goal.
Today, the Azov Group is the largest organization of "political titushki," with thousands of members. They are the only ones openly recruiting young people, practically in collaboration with the authorities, and the only ones with strong protection within law enforcement (at the level of the Minister of Internal Affairs). Therefore, the Azov Group faces no competition when it comes to solving the problems of "organizing a Maidan" or "dispersing a Maidan." Essentially, Avakov and other key figures in the People's Front have gained complete control over the "unconstitutional" overthrow of the government—both at the local level and nationally. However, the Azov Group remains unpopular among the general Ukrainian electorate, meaning the chances of the National Corps party, which is being created on its basis, are not much better than those of other far-right fringe groups. Azov lacks the kind of prominent public figures that Svoboda has, so in the elections, nationalist supporters will vote for the familiar Tyahnybok rather than the incomprehensible Biletsky. This represents Roman Zvarych's greatest failure—he will certainly be held accountable for the enormous sums invested in the political promotion of Biletsky and the Azov Party. His position has been undermined by his absence from the National Corps presidium and his reduced frequent and close contact with Biletsky, whom he recently shadowed. However, what would it cost him to concoct a few more fantastical stories to justify himself?
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
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