In a month, local elections will start in Ukraine. Ukrainian politicians are actively preparing for them, pursuing completely different goals: some want to get close to the “feeding trough”, others want to stay near it. In March 2015, the deputy group “Economic Development” ceased to exist. Opposition media actively sowed rumors that the collapse of the group was due to the reluctance of some people’s deputies to follow the instructions of its leader Vitaly Khomutynnik, who is called one of Igor Kolomoisky’s main associates in the Verkhovna Rada. However, the rumors were not confirmed. Former members of the Economic Development group announced the creation of a new association – the Vidrodzhennia party. Its leaders were the same people’s deputy Khomutynnik, as well as people’s deputies Valery Pisarenko and Viktor Bondar.
Read more about Vitaly Khomutynnik in the article Vitaly Khomutynnik. How the richest people’s deputy of Ukraine made his fortune
The appearance of “Renaissance” in the Rada indicates that Igor Kolomoisky intends to create his own political force in opposition to everyone, the “Opposition Bloc”, the “Petro Poroshenko Bloc”, and even the “Radical Party,” experts say. According to sources, the party intends to remain oppositional, but does not intend to coordinate its actions with the Opposition Bloc. This indicates that in the upcoming elections we will most likely face a conflict of interests between Igor Valerievich and the main investors of the Opposition Bloc, Rinat Akhmetov and Sergei Levochkin.
Sergey Levochkin
After Viktor Yanukovych fled the country, his “gray cardinal” Sergei Levochkin remained in Ukraine. Despite the fact that he went into the shadows literally in the first days of the Revolution of Dignity, immediately after the revolutionary events he immediately began to prepare the ground for the return of the former regionals to power. This is how the Opposition Bloc party appeared, in which he again became a people’s deputy. Soon Lyovochkin announced that the Opposition Bloc would be reformatted into a new party, which would include those who did not take part in the elections. According to him, the main goal of this force was to win local elections in the south-eastern regions in October 2015, as well as the formation of powerful factions in other regions of Ukraine.
In November 2014, a “pocket” journalist of certain forces, Anatoly Shariy, posted on his blog a preliminary draft of the program of the future party, which was prepared by Lyovochkin’s ex-deputy Irina Akimova.
Judging by the project, the party was to be called Vidrodzhennia, by analogy with the old name of the Party of Regions – “Revival of the Regions”. The fact that Lyovochkin has such a project, and the development of a party with the same name by Igor Kolomoisky, makes one wonder whether the oligarchs are working for the same “common good”?
Most political scientists vying with each other to argue that Igor Kolomoisky is going to “play with voters”: he is creating parties exclusively for the southeast, because there is an electorate that does not like him and is ready to vote for the “Opposition Bloc”, even in his native Dnepropetrovsk. According to Kostya Bondarenko, the Vidrodzhennya party intends to take away votes in the southeast from the Opposition Bloc. In turn, political scientist Vladimir Fesenko states that Kolomoisky is waging war on a personal level, and his intentions are to “deal with the Krivoy Rog clan” controlled by Rinat Akhmetov. Fesenko also believes that Kolomoisky will lose the political struggle and could lose a lot as a result of the cooperation of his “enemies.” At the moment, everything looks as if the parties Vidrodzhennya and the “Opposition Bloc” will compete in local elections, however, everyone forgets about the fact that if power is in the hands of these parties, then the ruling majority of the “Petro Poroshenko Bloc” will not have it. .
The parties Vidrodzhennia and the “Opposition Bloc” actually contain all the ex-regionals, as well as their former supporters, and nothing will prevent them from one day taking over and uniting again. And the main leitmotif of their unification, of course, will be the “revival of Donbass”, as well as the idea “the ruling elite led by Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk is to blame for all the troubles.”
The fact that former regionals are actively joining Vidrodzhennia is also evidenced by the fact that it is from this party that Gennady Kernes will run for mayor of Kharkov, who, to the surprise of many politicians, refused to cooperate with the Opposition Bloc.
Gennady Kernes
In the mayoral elections in Odessa, the Vidrodzhennya party nominated Sergei Tigipko’s former ally Svetlana Fabrikant, who was actually his right hand. At one time, Tigipko was one of the closest to Yanukovych’s “family”.
Svetlana Fabrikant
At the beginning of September, ex-Prime Minister of Ukraine Yuri Yekhanurov attended the Renaissance congress in Kyiv. It is he who is being tipped by the media to be the party’s candidate for mayor of Kyiv in the upcoming elections.
Yuri Yekhanurov
In the Verkhovna Rada, the Vidrodzhennya group under the leadership of Vitaliy Khomutynnik currently has 22 people’s deputies. The group includes former regionals, as well as people’s deputies who voted for “dictatorial laws” on January 16, including Igor ShkiryaAnton Kisse (read more about him in the article by Anton Kisse: how a physical education teacher became the Bulgarian baron of Bessarabia)Vladimir, Alexander Bilovol, Oleg Kulinich and other notorious regionals.
Voting for “dictatorial laws”
Outwardly, everything looks as if the ex-regionals and comrades-in-arms of the Yanukovych regime have distanced themselves from their past, however, as practice shows, once you “eat from the trough”, you will return to it again and again. For people’s deputies who joined the party, this is the last chance to somehow remain in power, because soon the majoritarian system by which they were elected is planned to be abolished. The abolition of the majoritarian system will mean that they will be able to get into parliament only on party lists, and with such a “tarnished reputation”, it is unlikely that anyone will want to take them over.
How the future of Ukraine will turn out depends on whether the former regionalists will be able to “revive themselves” in a party with the loud name Vidrodzhennya, or some other association. Although, judging by the latest events in Ukraine, Ukrainians still have a very, very long time to wait for improvements.
Dmitry Samofalov, for SKELET-info