In three weeks, by-elections to the Verkhovna Rada will be held in two districts.
The Verkhovna Rada will soon be filled with two new members. In three weeks, by-elections will be held in two single-member constituencies: in the town of Nadvirna in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (Servant of the People Zinoviy Andriyovych, who served as mayor there for 13 years, was elected head of the amalgamated territorial community in the local elections and left the Rada), and in Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, where independent MP Ruslan Trebushkin, who also led the town until 2019, was elected mayor.
FILE: Ruslan Trebushkin: The True Story of the Pokrovsky Werewolf Mayor. Part 1
Importantly, these elections are the penultimate under the majoritarian system, which will disappear in the next campaign. The final chord will be in the districts in the Cherkasy and Kherson regions, vacated by MPs Ihor Kolykhayev (the new mayor of Kherson) and Oleksandr Skichko, who has left for the governor's post. That's why the battle in these districts is intense: the parties have already deployed a whole force of "parachutists" (a term for politicians outside the region), and their own "clones" have also emerged, according to reports. News.
Church propaganda and clones
Fifteen candidates have registered in constituency No. 87 (Nadvirna). Oleksandr Shevchenko, owner of the Bukovel resort and a member of parliament for the previous two convocations, is considered the front-runner. He was a member of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction, but left the faction amid deteriorating relations between Petro Poroshenko and Ihor Kolomoisky (whose business interests include Bukovel). In the 2019 elections, Shevchenko ran for the UKROP party (also affiliated with the Privat Group), but was de facto considered a technical candidate, working in the interests of the Zelenskyy team.
FILE: Oleksandr Shevchenko: Bukovel's "land and budget thief." Part 1
Now, in the midst of a new round of confrontation between her patron and the Presidential Office, if Shevchenko wins, she will likely join the "For the Future" group, which is considered one of Kolomoisky's assets in his bid for the presidency. Shevchenko is currently campaigning through charitable foundations (her own and those of her ally, Ihor Palytsia): on Facebook, she reports on repairing road shoulders, cleaning Carpathian riverbeds, and purchasing books for local libraries. Local media outlets, meanwhile, report on Shevchenko's organization of a free children's ski school, free Christmas trips for schoolchildren to Bukovel, and church visits. This last point even provoked a negative reaction from the Greek Catholic clergy: UGCC priest Yustin Boyko published an open letter on Facebook calling on Shevchenko to "stop using the Church as a platform for her election campaign."
"The icing on the cake" is the registration of Shevchenko clones. On the last day of candidate registration for District 87, two more Oleksandr Shevchenkos (one of whom has a full namesake, including his patronymic) submitted their documents. "The 'clone technology' requires registration on the last day, to prevent their registration from being challenged. This can significantly alter the balance of power in the district, as they can siphon off between 0,5% and 3% of a candidate's vote, especially if the clone is a full clone, i.e., one with a patronymic," political strategist Boris Tizenhausen told Vesti. "There's no established mechanism for combating clones—the Constitution prohibits preventing someone from running. I remember several cases where they decided the outcome: the gap between the candidates was 1,5%, and the clone siphoned off the decisive votes."
Elbow bumping
Technology clearly plays into the hands of other candidates, the most prominent of whom, both literally and figuratively, is Vasyl Virastyuk, multiple winner of the title of "Ukraine's Strongest Man," nominated by Servant of the People. On Facebook, he wrote that he received the offer personally from the president ("with whom I have had a long-standing friendly relationship and whom I personally trust"), and in the Rada, he pledged to advocate for the community that elects him and to develop sports rehabilitation for ATO/JFO veterans (i.e., he will join the Youth and Sports Committee).
Virastyuk's aides report that he himself is constantly at meetings, campaigning in various towns around Nadvirna. And, according to Vesti's sources in Servant of the People, they are genuinely counting on Virastyuk's victory. "He's ranked second in the polls, and he's rising rapidly," our source says. In mid-February, however, he was still in third place, against Oleksandr Shevchenko with 42,8% and Ruslan Koshulinsky with 21,4% (according to the social group "Rating").
In fact, the third candidate—Koshulynskyi, head of the Svoboda party secretariat, head of the Lviv City Council faction, and former vice speaker of the Verkhovna Rada—came second in the district in the 2019 elections. He is recognizable and has the advantage of an extensive party network: heads of local communities, even the mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, Ruslan Martsinkiv, are campaigning for him. Moreover, he is a local fixture in the district—he lived in the village of Bytkiv for a long time, and both of his daughters were born in Nadvirna.
It's clear that Koshulynsky is campaigning for voters in the far-right, nationalist niche. And there's already some jostling going on there: recently, for example, former Svoboda MP Iryna Farion helped spread a story on Facebook by Right Sector volunteer Nazariy Mudryi about another candidate, Marusya Zveroboy (aka Olena Belenkaya/Sambul). According to him, the volunteer and ATO participant, who 1,5 months ago "distinguished herself" by publicly insulting President Zelenskyy, was nicknamed "Manka Obligatsiya" at the front for allegedly embezzling funds raised for humanitarian aid. Leaflets against Zveroboy are also being distributed in Nadvirna, bearing the caption "Our Parachutist"—a parody of the main message of her campaign ("Ours is unshakable").
Yosyp Rezes, a candidate from the KMKS Party of Hungarians in Ukraine, will also run there. He is a notable figure: as head of the Department for Nationalities and Religious Affairs of the Zakarpattia Regional State Administration, he did not hesitate to criticize the "language" laws passed by the Rada under Petro Poroshenko in comments to Vesti. Today, in official Central Election Commission documents, Rezes is listed as "advisor to the head of the NGO 'Society of Hungarian Culture in Zakarpattia.'" He was also one of the organizers of the KMKS charitable foundation in the village of Syurte. It was there, as a reminder, that a scandal erupted with the newly elected village council, which sang the Ukrainian anthem at its first meeting, followed by the Hungarian national prayer (also the national anthem of Hungary).
Also in the “second tier” is the former head of the State Transport Safety Service Mikhail NonyakYuriy Goliney, a businessman nominated by the "Platform of Communities" party, is among the candidates nominated by the "Platform of Communities." Meanwhile, candidates Ruslan Zozulya from the Odesa region, a former MP from the BYuT party in two convocations, and lawyer Ivan Makar from Kyiv (from the "Everyone Matters" party) can be considered "parachutists."
"The point of nominating candidates for such little-known parties is to make a name for themselves. If you've recently created a party, its name will at least be read by people going to the polls. And it will be completely free, since there's no need to spend money on campaigning," Tiesenhausen told Vesti.
Opposition Platform - For Life against Akhmetov's group
The race will be no less fierce in District No. 50 in the Donetsk region. Here, the main battle will be between candidates from the Opposition Platform – For Life (OPZZh) and Rinat Akhmetov. The former has nominated Artem Marchevsky, the general producer of the 112 Ukraine television channel, which was closed by a Security Council decision and presidential decree, and whose name appears on the National Security and Defense Council's sanctions list. He leads the Opposition Platform – For Life's "youth wing." Among Marchevsky's political campaigns, he has supported blogger di.rubens (who became famous thanks to a TikTok video where she chose "between Ukraine and Russia," favoring the latter) and a 19-year-old Kyiv resident who dared to stroll through Lviv wearing a Soviet-era ushanka with a hammer and sickle on its badge (he was detained and insulted by a vigilant ATO veteran and city council member). In the 2019 elections, Marchevskyi competed in the 60th district, losing to MP Dmytro Lubinets.
It's worth noting that the Opposition Platform - For Life party has a very strong starting position in the region. According to KIIS, the party had 51,5% support among respondents as of early February. However, it will face resource-rich competitors from Akhmetov's side. The first of these, Dobropillia Mayor Andriy Aksyonov, is nominated by the Poryadok party (essentially the oligarch's "backup" regional political project). At the party congress, he was endorsed by deputies and former top managers of Akhmetov's business entities, Musa Magomedov and Viktoria Grib. He is also supported by Mayor Ruslan Trebushkin, Aksyonov's former opponent in 2019, which can be considered a key indicator for voters—Aksyonov is clearly the main candidate in the district.
The "basic" Opposition Bloc, close to the oligarch (whose district candidate, Ruslan Trebushkin, won in 2019), nominated pensioner Nadezhda Maslo, a former deputy head of the Pokrovsky District Council. She's been battling the government on Facebook (calling for the resignation of Zelensky's team, imposing a five-year moratorium on tariff increases, and posting photos of knitted dresses "for my little princess"). However, it's noteworthy that the district's Opposition Bloc Facebook page is inactive (the last news was from June 2019), meaning the staff hasn't begun full-scale work.
Vesti's sources also include Yuri Tretyak, Trebushkin's advisor, and Sergei Zvagolsky, a miner at the Pokrovskoye mine's working face, among the "technical" candidates.
"Akhmetov, who currently enjoys a good relationship with the Presidential Office, has only single-member deputies in the current parliament. And his group can emphasize that these deputies (and, of course, the candidate in District No. 50) will help voters by leveraging these connections," political scientist Alexei Yakubin explained to Vesti. "And for the Opposition Platform — For Life, these elections are a way to demonstrate that public support has grown since the sanctions, 'we are perceived here as the victims,' which is why they were counting on Marchevsky."
A lawyer for the Berkut officers and a Hungarian
In fact, the Servant of the People party in the Pokrovsk district placed its bets not on a media figure, but on a local official, the head of the district state administration, Andriy Bondarenko. Little is known about him—he hails from Donbas and worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the tax police. The second- and third-tier candidates, however, illustrate the mixed political landscape.
The Shariy Party nominated lawyer Valentin Rybin, who defended Stanislav Yezhov (former translator for Volodymyr Groysman during his premiership, accused of treason), several Berkut officers accused in the Maidan case, as well as Volodymyr Ruban, an accomplice in the "Nadiya Savchenko case," and so on. Among the points of his platform are regionally comprehensible protections for the Russian language, the restoration of social benefits to residents of uncontrolled territories, and so on.
A polar opposite is the candidacy of Yulia Kuzmenko (Petro Poroshenko's EU candidate), a volunteer and pediatric cardiac surgeon who was arrested on charges of murdering Radio Vesti journalist Pavlo Sheremet. She is running in absentia, awaiting a court decision under house arrest. Kuzmenko herself has already appealed to the court to change her pretrial detention (so she can campaign), and her party calls Kuzmenko's candidacy "a response to appeals from veterans and volunteer organizations."
It is noteworthy that the KMKS party of Hungarians is also active in this district: it has nominated Istvan Dobsza, an advisor to the head of the public organization "Society of Hungarian Culture of Transcarpathia", as a candidate.
In topic: Sitting in the Rada is unprofitable: Why MPs are becoming mayors and who will replace them
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