Vyacheslav Kirilenko: Bad boy in Ukrainian politics

You have to be a truly unique politician not to earn either a positive rating or even the enmity of voters in a quarter of a century of vigorous activity. Posing himself as a principled right-wing patriot with youthful maximalism, Vyacheslav Kirilenko is in fact an example of a typical incompetent political conformist, ready to sell his ideas for a position or funding. The only thing this man succeeded in was building intrigues against those who considered him their comrade-in-arms, and betraying those who trusted him.

Philosopher from the Zone

Vyacheslav Anatolyevich Kirilenko was born on June 7, 1968 in the village of Polesskoye (formerly Kaganovichi Pervoe) in the Kyiv region. Then it was almost a small city with a population of over 11 thousand people, with two factories and three schools – in one of which his mother worked as a music teacher. The five-century history of the village was cut short by the Chernobyl disaster: it was covered by a cloud of emissions, raising the radioactive background to 500 μR/hour. Therefore, Polesskoe entered the Chernobyl zone and fell under the second wave of resettlement (the village is currently abandoned and dead, like Pripyat).

This event radically changed the lives of all residents of Polessky, including young Slavik Kirilenko. Who at that time (1984-87) allegedly studied at the Kherson Naval School (now Kherson Maritime College) with a specialty in “operation of ship automated systems.” But for some reason, on the website of this college, as well as on the website of its former cadets, there is no mention of its graduate who rose to the skies.

Meanwhile, under the program of resettlement of residents of the 30-kilometer Zone, the Kirilenko family moved to live in Kyiv, in one of the high-rise buildings built for the Chernobyl victims, which were then hastily erected in all cities of the country. The victims were not only provided with housing: conscripts from the Chernobyl zone received long deferments and were even exempted from conscription into the army. Apparently, this is why in the biography of Vyacheslav Kirilenko there is no mention of his army service. In addition, quotas were created for young migrants for preferential admission to educational institutions. Kirilenko took advantage of them, becoming a student at the Faculty of Philosophy at Kyiv State University in 1988. Shevchenko.

They say that in choosing the faculty, Kirilenko was guided by the fact that it did not require knowledge of the exact sciences, in which he was not strong. And instead of comprehending the humanities, Vyacheslav Kirilenko immediately fell into “perestroika” politics. Since KSU named after. Shevchenko has long been known as a forge of “nationally-conscious” personnel, so it is not surprising that the student Kirilenko joined the late dissident movement. At first, he hung out at meetings of the “Ukrainian Helsinki Group”, where gray-moustached veterans of the “little zmaganni” explained to him that the Chernobyl disaster was the work of Moscow’s eternal anti-Ukrainian policy. So Vyacheslav Kirilenko became imbued with the national idea, and already in December 1989 he became chairman of the secretariat of the newly created Ukrainian Student Union (USU). Together with him, Oles Doniy, who studied at the parallel faculty of history, became the head of the USS.

At the same time, Kirilenko got into his first scandal. Vladislav Bugera (from Ufa) studied with him in the same group, who became interested in the ideology of “pure Marxism” and later returned to Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), where he became a philosopher, professor at Ufa University and a left-wing politician (opposition to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism)). In 1989, Bugera joined the Kiev pro-Russian and pro-Soviet movement “Fatherland Forum”, and often clashed with his classmate due to opposing political positions.

One day, having found no other arguments for the dispute, Kirilenko decided to use a purely “sailor” technique, and publicly accused Bugera of homosexuality, “using an aggressive and derogatory form of speech,” as defenders of tolerance would say today. Having thus silenced his taken aback opponent, the future Minister of Culture of Ukraine subsequently used this method more than once, and not only against Bugera. Little did he know then that in European political circles such forms of insults would become unacceptable and even punishable. Therefore, years later, having become a pro-European Ukrainian politician, Vyacheslav Kirilenko made sure that no one remembered this scandalous incident from his political biography. However, you can’t hide an awl in a bag…

Rising from granite

On October 2, 1990, about fifty members of the “Ukrainian Student Union” went to Kyiv’s October Revolution Square (now Independence Square), set up cots and several tents, and declared an indefinite hunger strike, demanding the fulfillment of a number of their demands. Among which were the resignation of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR Vitaly Masol, the adoption of a law on a referendum, the adoption of a law on conscript service of Ukrainians only on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, and the nationalization of the property of the Communist Party. This is how the “revolution on granite” began, later called the first Ukrainian Maidan, which brought its main participants into big politics: Vyacheslav Kirilenko, Oles Doniya, Oleg Tyagnibok (Read more about him in the article by Oleg Tyagnibok. Sponsors and associates of the Ukrainian nationalist), Vladimir Chemeris, Yuriy Lutsenko (Read more about him in the article Yuriy Lutsenko. “Terminator” of Ukrainian politics) and many other “young and promising” people.

Years later, when Ukrainian citizens stopped believing in spontaneous spontaneous revolutions, many questions arose about what the “revolution on granite” actually was? There are still no answers to them: former students continue to claim that in October 1990 “Ukrainian youth woke up,” but the then officials and first secretaries continue to remain silent. However, a number of interesting features accompanying those events can be noted.

Firstly, in the spring-summer of 1990, the leadership of the KGB changed in the Ukrainian SSR (even to the point of replacing the heads of regional departments), and the new one unexpectedly showed some sympathy for the idea of ​​​​Ukrainian sovereignty. “Rukhovites” were no longer detained and dragged for interrogation; moreover, the KGB began to secretly protect them from detention by the police. True, such “protection” was received only by their “wards”, who played within the framework of the agreed rules. This was clearly visible in the events of the “revolution on granite”: the police and “people in civilian clothes” were around the starving students and like-minded people hanging out nearby, without making any attempts to disperse them, and protecting them from hostile supporters of the USSR – which could then be met in Kyiv .

Secondly, the Kyiv students who participated in the action were protected from expulsion for absenteeism from universities. And during the day, Kyiv high school students were brought to the square in an organized manner, who actually became extras for photojournalists (this would happen again in November 2004). Thirdly, the action had support in the Verkhovna Rada: not only among the deputies of the “democratic opposition” who did not decide anything, but also from the team of Leonid Kravchuk, who had recently been elected its chairman. Who personally brought student representatives (Doniya and Kirilenko) to the session hall and gave them the opportunity to speak from the podium.

And then this “revolution” suddenly ended – immediately after the Rada dismissed Vitaly Masol. A few hours after this, the students stopped their hunger strike and began to wind down their action, just as they had started it in the same organized manner. Vyacheslav Kirilenko and Oles Doniy seemed to have forgotten about all their other demands, being satisfied with Kravchuk’s formal promise to “consider and accept.” Why? There is an opinion that the “revolution on granite” was just a street show as part of the struggle for power between two groups of the late Soviet elite. One of which first replaced the leadership of the republican KGB with its people, then put Kravchuk at the head of the Verkhovna Rada, and then removed from the key post of head of the Council of Ministers a man of its competitors, Vitaly Masol (who returned to power in 1994, after Kravchuk left). For this purpose, the then innovative method of “popular protest” was used, performed by the “Student Union” of Vyacheslav Kirilenko. And it is unlikely that Kirilenko did not understand that he was just a pawn in a big game, moreover, in fact, he was working for the very “commies” that he urged his peers to fight. However, this role seemed to suit him quite well. Perhaps because the leaders of the starving students received some kind of “gesheft” from their action.

Addition from SKELET-info: Actually it was a test, a rehearsal. The curators of the action were interested in how politicians and the masses would behave in relation to this action. Based on the results and thanks to a strong adjustment, the so-called The “Orange Revolution”, which, in turn, was a test run for the “Euromaidan”, which gave rise to the civil war.

“And you, Brutus!”

And yet, the “revolution on granite” was the most striking episode in the life of Vyacheslav Kirilenko. After all, his further biography is a gloomy routine of a political functionary, sometimes illuminated by outbreaks of scandals, which he tried to bury in oblivion.

In 1993, Vyacheslav Kirilenko graduated from Kyiv State University. Shevchenko, and entered graduate school (faculty of philosophy), where he met his future wife Ekaterina (born 1971), who graduated from Cherkasy Pedagogical University with a degree in Russian language and literature. Later (in 1996), they almost simultaneously defended their candidate dissertations: Vyacheslav on the topic “Ukrainian philosophy of national radicalism of the 20th century,” and Ekaterina on the topic “Philosophy of Mandelstam’s culture.” The radically opposing topics of their dissertations did not prevent them from soon getting married and creating a strong family.

In 1992-93, Kirilenko himself already headed the Ukrainian Student Union, which no longer engaged in any actions and turned into a semblance of the late Komsomol: it multiplied its cells in Ukrainian universities, nominated candidates for elections, participated in conferences and congresses, and most importantly, absorbed grants coming from the Western diaspora to support the national youth movement. This “grant-eating”, a carefree existence on free money, had a serious impact on the formation of the new personality of Vyacheslav Kirilenko. In the early 90s, many rushed into business, but Kirilenko did not even try to open his own company and trade metal, transport imports or build financial pyramids. His business in life became receiving grants, subsidies, subsidies and assistance (and, according to rumors, kickbacks). Kirilenko is one of the few Ukrainian politicians who do not have their own firms, enterprises, or even a seedy salon – and this allows him to seem like an honest professional.

But Vyacheslav Kirilenko showed his professionalism in another way: in the intrigues and behind-the-scenes fuss that are an integral part of the life of the party elite. At the same time, not having the qualities of an independent leader, Kirilenko always preferred a profitable place in someone’s retinue. In 1993, he joined the People’s Movement of Ukraine (NRU), where, with the help of Oles Doniya, he quickly won the favor of Vyacheslav Chernovol. Kirilenko makes a successful exchange: he brings to the “People’s Movement” the entire structure of his “Ukrainian Student Union”, on the basis of which he creates and heads (until 1999) the “Young People’s Movement”. At the same time, Vyacheslav Kirilenko became a member of the scarlet council of the “People’s Movement” (October 1993 – April 1994), and then a member of the Central Provod of the NRU (April 1994 – March 1999) and a member of the presidium of the Central Provod of the NRU (December 1995 – March 1999). In April 1998, according to the party list of the People’s Movement (No. 18), Vyacheslav Kirilenko was elected as a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada for the first time.

At the same time, having lost his political independence, which he did not really need, Kirilenko latched on to the huge (compared to the USS) financial resources of the People’s Movement. And they were really considerable: in addition to the money of the diaspora and the party’s internal sponsors, the NRU received funding through the business schemes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (this ministry was considered “Rukh’s fiefdom”). Thanks to this, in the 90s, “People’s Movement” was the largest right-wing party in Ukraine, confidently competing with both the left Communist Party of Ukraine and the Socialist Party of Ukraine, and the pro-presidential “centrists” NDP, SDPU (o).

This played a fatal role in the future fate of the party and its leader. On February 28, 1999, Deputy Chairman of the NRU Yuri Kostenko organized a party congress, at which he and his supporters overthrew Vyacheslav Chernovol and was elected the new head of the People’s Movement. In this “palace intrigue”, Vyacheslav Kirilenko not only sided with Kostenko, but also actively helped him, using the structures of his “Young Rukh”. Thus, Kirilenko actually betrayed Vyacheslav Chernovol, who had accepted him and provided his patronage for many years – to the latter’s considerable surprise and sincere chagrin. As they say, “and you, Brutus!”

The reason for this coup was the upcoming presidential elections (October 1999), which Leonid Kuchma decided to win at any cost. Therefore, it was decided to remove Vyacheslav Chernovol from the election race – first depriving him of support from his party. What benefit Kirilenko, who participated in the conspiracy, could have had in this case remains unknown. But it turned out that again, as in 1990, it worked in favor of those whom he criticized in public as “the regime of former commies.”

Be that as it may, the plan was only partially successful: a few days later a new congress of the NRU took place, at which Chernovol’s supporters confirmed his powers. And on March 25, Vyacheslav Chernovol died in a car accident, which is believed to have been deliberately staged. His place was taken by Gennady Udovenko, who gathered into his half of the NRU most of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ “Rukhovites” and, accordingly, took control of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ business schemes (in the West, Ukrainian embassies still have the image of “offices of smugglers”). But the presidential elections had already been lost by Rukh.

Found in a trash heap

With a rating of 1.5-2.5%, “People’s Movement” Kostenko and Kirilenko could not qualify for passage to the Rada in the 2002 elections, and their mandates were under threat. First of all, this concerned Vyacheslav Kirilenko, who, due to a complete lack of political popularity among voters, lost all majoritarian elections. His political future was saved by Viktor Yushchenko: in February 2002, both “People’s Movements” became part of the “Our Ukraine” bloc, according to the list of which (No. 20) Kirilenko again received the mandate of a people’s deputy – becoming deputy chairman of the Committee on Social Policy. A few years later, angry, Yushchenko would say to the “young politicians” gathered under his wing that he “picked them up in the garbage bins.”

Kirilenko did not waste time, because in the large crowd of Yushchenko’s associates he needed to demonstrate some of his exceptional qualities in order to break into the “inner circle”. He did this in two ways: he worked hard as a confidant of a presidential candidate, and became friends with Katerina Chumachenko. And then getting closer personally to Yushchenko, he diligently copied all his habits and hobbies: he began wearing embroidered shirts, learned to sculpt pots and whistles.

Of course, during the Maidan of 2004, Kirilenko simply did not leave the stage, but the chants of “Yushchenko! Yushchenko! the crowd hardly paid attention to the unpopular, unremarkable “young politician” with a double chin. There was even a joke then that Kirilenko had the typical appearance of a Bad Boy. They joked for a reason: while getting closer to Yushchenko, Kirilenko simultaneously moved away from Yuri Kostenko, thus betraying his second “teacher”. The fact is that the leader of the Ukrainian People’s Party (UNP), which has become the “People’s Movement” Kostenko since 2003, either disagreed with Yushchenko on some issues, or was simply wiped away from him by numerous dishonesers. As a result, it was not the head of the UNP Kostenko who stood behind the back of the “people’s president”, but his deputy Kirilenko. Offended by Kostenko, in March 2005 he left Our Ukraine and created his own electoral bloc – after which Kirilenko, demonstrating his loyalty to Viktor Yushchenko, defiantly left the UNP.

The diligence was not in vain: in February 2005, Vyacheslav Kirilenko was appointed Minister of Social Policy and Labor in the Tymoshenko government (under the Our Ukraine quota), and after her scandalous resignation he joined the Yekhanurov government (Read more about him in the article by Yuri Yekhanurov. Dark spots in the biography of the candidate for mayor of Kyiv) as Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Affairs. Here he got involved in another scandal, already a corruption one: regional deputy Vasily Khara accused Kirilenko of putting his people in the leadership of the Social Insurance Fund for Temporary Disability (SFUT), after which the fund “helped” win a tender for the purchase of preferential vouchers several sanatoriums, having received kickbacks from them. Kirilenko denied these accusations and even promised to sue Haru, but then, as always, he decided that it would be best to forget about this incident.

In addition, in March 2006, Kirilenko was again elected to parliament on the list of “Our Ukraine” (already at No. 6), and in August he left the Cabinet of Ministers, and in December 2006 he headed the parliamentary faction of the party – thereby receiving Yushchenko’s full trust. However, they wrote that he owed such trust to the head of the Presidential Secretariat, Viktor Baloga, (read more about him in the article VIKTOR BALOHA. THE PHENOMENON OF THE TRANSCARPATHIAN GOD) who recommended him to Yushchenko as a “complete mediocrity”, capable of being absolutely loyal and manageable under certain conditions. In April 2007, the degree of trust increased, and Yushchenko personally nominated Kirilenko for the post of head of the Our Ukraine party.

In the 2007 parliamentary elections, Vyacheslav Kirilenko already became the head of the political council of the Our Ukraine – People’s Self-Defense bloc (NUNS) and was elected to the Rada at No. 2 (the first was the honorary leader of the party, Viktor Yushchenko). According to the agreement of the winning parties (NUNS and BYuT), Kirilenko was supposed to become speaker, but this caused extreme displeasure among many politicians. Taras Chernovol then compared Kirilenko to Nero’s horse.

As a result, Yushchenko had an unpleasant conversation with Kirilenko, after which he formally recused himself and remained simply the leader of the NUNS faction in the Rada. And the speaker’s chair floated first to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and then to Vladimir Litvin (Read more about him in the article Vladimir Litvin: does Ukraine need a professional Judas?). But this was the loss of those very specific conditions that ensured the loyalty of Vyacheslav Kirilenko. Seeing the futility of his position, aggravated by the fall in Viktor Yushchenko’s rating, Kirilenko decided to leave him too. In December 2008, he resigned as ambassador to the head of the faction, but Malchish-Plokhish could not simply leave it without causing mischief. And at the beginning of 2009, Kirilenko took away some of the deputies from the NUNS, announcing the creation of his own movement “For Ukraine!” (into which he turned the purchased marginal Social Protection Party). This finally finished off the NUNS, split by a political crisis, and actually became its end.

It didn’t work out with Yulia – it worked out with Senya

Kirilenko’s political maneuver was clear: realizing that Yushchenko was a political corpse and would not win the 2010 elections, he abandoned him and bet on Yulia Tymoshenko. However, Tymoshenko did not want to cooperate with Kirilenko, for whom she had great antipathy since the political crisis of 2005, aggravated by the split in the coalition of NUNS and BYU in 2008. Therefore, Kirilenko found himself in a difficult situation (under the threat of losing funding) and did support Yushchenko in the 2010 elections – which, however, did not help Viktor Andreevich at all. It was a disaster: the rating of the party “For Ukraine!” did not gain even 1%, and in 2012 Kirilenko could lose not only his mandate, but also his livelihood (who would finance such a hopeless party?).

He was saved by the arrest of Yulia Tymoshenko and the unification of the orphaned “Batkivshchyna” with the “Front of Change”, as a result of which the opposition bloc was headed by Kirilenko’s old friend from “Our Ukraine” Arseniy Yatsenyuk. In December 2011, they signed an agreement on joint opposition activities, and in 2012, Kirilenko was again elected as a people’s deputy on the Batkivshchyna list (No. 6). The politician, who repeatedly betrayed his leaders and was often distinguished by simply boorish behavior towards his opponents, received the post of chairman of the committee on culture and spirituality. Where he distinguished himself with a number of rather scandalous bills that had the most distant relation to culture.

Thus, in 2013, Kirilenko authored a bill recognizing OUN-UPA soldiers as “the side that fought for the independence of Ukraine in World War II.” This did not lead to anything other than further aggravation of the senseless political confrontation in the Rada. And on February 23, 2014, on the second day after the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, it was Kirilenko who submitted to the Rada the bill “On invalidating the Law on State Language Policy.” Thus, which canceled the previously adopted (in accordance with the European Charter) provisions on the Russian language in Ukraine. The bill was voted on, but not signed by the acting. speaker Turchinov (Read more about him in the article by Alexander Turchinov. Skeletons in the closet of the “bloody pastor” of Ukraine), who stated that the socio-political resonance would be unpredictable. And the resonance did happen: it was with the publicity of Kirilenko’s bill that the rebellion of the pro-Russian population of Crimea and Donbass began, which quickly grew into separatism.

On September 10, 2014, the “For Ukraine” party became part of the “People’s Front”, and in the early parliamentary elections, Vyacheslav Kirilenko returned to the Rada again at No. 8 on the bloc’s list. After which, in December, he joined the coalition government, taking the post of Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy, and at the same time the Minister of Culture of Ukraine. And in these positions he again distinguished himself only with new scandals. So, in January 2015 (even before the official decommunization) Kirilenko said that the Ministry of Culture would… encourage the demolition of Soviet monuments. Then he developed a law on the Ukrainianization of musical television and radio broadcasts – which was opposed by such Ukrainian performers as Jamala, Tina Karol, Irina Bilyk, Potap.

But the loudest scandal was around the doctoral dissertation of his wife Ekaterina Kirilenko, who in March 2014 (with the support of her husband) was appointed head of the department of philosophy at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Art (KNUKiI). In October 2015, she defended her doctoral dissertation, which a number of Ukrainian humanities scholars called plagiarism: supposedly entire sections were simply rewritten from scientific works of Ukrainian and Russian authors. In addition, this dissertation was prepared between April 2014 and April 2015 and does not constitute a claimed “multi-year scholarly effort.” Further – more: immediately after his wife received her doctorate, Minister of Culture Kirilenko appointed a competition to fill the position of rector of KNUKiI – after which the university began to fire all teachers and heads of departments who could compete with Ekaterina Kirilenko. The scandal spilled over into the media, scientific luminaries appealed to the prime minister and the president. As a result, Ekaterina Kirilenko’s dissertation was sent to the expert commission of the Ministry of Education – and was declared genuine by it. However, the process of promoting the deputy prime minister’s wife to the position of rector of KNUKiI has been suspended. And Vyacheslav Kirilenko himself at the beginning of 2016, although he joined Groysman’s government (Read more about him in the article by Vladimir Groysman. Dark spots in the biography of the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada) while retaining the post of Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Policy, was deprived of the portfolio of Minister of Culture.

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Vyacheslav Kirilenko’s future plans are not difficult to predict. The Popular Front has long lost its chances of winning parliamentary elections again (primarily thanks to its ministers), and therefore it has no prospects for Kirilenko. At the moment, he is holding on to it only because the coalition agreement between the NF and the BPP ensures the safety of ministerial portfolios under the Popular Front quota. And Kirilenko cannot yet abandon Yatsenyuk’s block, so as not to lose his post as deputy prime minister. But as soon as this coalition agreement ceases to be in effect, the political bun will roll on. Surely he is already looking closely at his new allies and patrons.

Sergey Varis, for SKELET-info