During this year's parliamentary election campaign, the country's leading radical managed to significantly increase his ratings. Lyashko skillfully employs a strategy of naked populism as a leader, concealing the rather unsightly nakedness of his political team.
On September 14, Oleg Lyashko, with his characteristic radical bravura, presented the names of the first twelve candidates on the “list” to the electorate.
"Number two is my comrade-in-arms, Andriy Lozovoy, head of the Radical Party faction in the Kyiv City Council and a graduate student at the Drahomanov National Pedagogical University. Number three is war hero and commander of the Aidar special battalion, Serhiy Melnychuk," and the same patriotic spirit continues up to number 12!
Lyashko thrust singer Zlata Ognevich, prominent intellectual and public administration specialist Igor Popov, legendary Luhansk-1 battalion commander Artem Vitko, progressive economist Viktor Gapasyuk, and other "worthy people" into the wide-open electoral mouths.
Lyashko, however, didn't reveal the names of the candidates ranked below 12th place. Therefore, who's hiding in the radical hole remains a mystery to many.
At this point, only one particularly interesting character has been reliably identified. His name is Sergei Viktorovich Rybalko. A man with a past fashionable in light of the upcoming lustration, and a present high-profile in terms of criminal cases. They say of such men, "There's no room for stigma." Here are just a few episodes from his turbulent life, which the leading media outlets have vied with each other to report on.
In the service of Russian intelligence
Journalists from the "Groshi" program on the 1+1 television channel expressed the opinion that Sergei Rybalko, former Deputy Minister of Ecology of Ukraine during the Yanukovych era, may be connected to the Russian intelligence group that was exposed by Ukrainian intelligence services in Dnepropetrovsk this winter.
As it turned out, the group of Russian intelligence officers included employees of the SI Group corporation (the production and sale of snacks under the SEMKI, Flint, Macho, Morskie, and other brands), owned by Sergei Rybalko.
"An illegal task force—something like a detective agency. In peacetime, it spied on influential people to blackmail them. They eavesdropped and filmed not only on the streets but also in particularly sensitive situations," the "Pluses" report states.
As evidence, journalists presented explicitly intimate footage of high-ranking officials, seized from the intelligence group's personnel. According to 1+1 sources, the group's target audience included heads of regional state administrations, deputy heads of various agencies, regional prosecutors, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the former Minister of Ecology, Chief Rybalko.
Ultimately, the SBU opened a criminal case for the uncovering of the intelligence group. The report's authors are confident that there are many similar groups in Ukraine, on whose support pro-Russian separatists in the country's southeastern regions are counting.
Drugs, wiretapping, loss of assets
In January 2014, another criminal case was opened against officials of SI Group Corporation companies. This time, it was under Articles 307, 311, 359, and 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The charges relate to tax evasion, drug and precursor trafficking, and the illegal use of wiretapping equipment. This was reported by the website Censor.net.
Citing law enforcement agencies, media outlets also reported that during searches of SI Group's office and production facilities, drugs were found in packages of crackers from a well-known brand, and amphetamines were found in the employees' blood. The investigation also established that profits from the sale of datura were used to finance the activities of a Russian intelligence group. How Sergey Rybalko remains at large is anyone's guess. One thing is certain: after the shocking revelations of Sergey Rybalko's illegal activities, even his closest partner, Ivan Omelchenko, the co-founder of SI Group, refused to do business with him. SI Group no longer exists; the company has been divided.
Parliament or prison
In light of the circumstances outlined, the reasons that prompted Sergei Rybalko's election to the country's highest legislative body become clear. First, Rybalko needs parliamentary immunity to dismiss the criminal cases already underway. Second, parliamentary immunity would allow Lyashko's political ally to continue his extortion and blackmail with impunity.
It's worth noting that the upcoming election campaign isn't Rybalko's first attempt at becoming a people's representative. He first attempted it in 2010 during the local elections. However, his campaign staff was caught red-handed by law enforcement. On October 23, 2010, in the Polieski district of the Kyiv region, people claiming to be representatives of candidate Serhiy Rybalka approached residents of the village of Lugovyky, conducted a poll to determine their vote choice, and took down their passport information. Police were waiting for the "pseudo-agitators" as they left their homes. Remarkably, those arrested immediately confessed to the police, who had handed citizens one thousand hryvnias for each vote cast in favor of Serhiy Rybalka on election day. Although our hero managed to evade charges of vote-buying, he lost the election decisively.
Now another question intrigues: will Rybalko's attempt to worm his way into parliament be successful? Will Oleh Lyashko, who was the first to campaign for the lustration law, fail to cleanse his own "Augean stables" of the manure of corruption and crime? Otherwise, Lyashko will be forced to explain to voters what kind of purge of power he is, ushering into office comrades who, alongside the mafia moguls of the previous parliament, nervously smoke on the sidelines?
Leonid Isakov, Censor
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