For a Kyiv mayor candidate who didn't make it to the top 10 in either of two recent polls, Volodymyr Makeyenko seems remarkably confident.
Makeyenko, 50, says he has it all: the age, knowledge and experience to run a big, capital city.
A veteran of Ukrainian politics, he started his lawmaker’s career in 1989. In fact, he was among those who voted for the Act of the Declaration of the Independence of Ukraine in 1991. He has been in quite a few parties over his career, and now he is on the newly created Nash Kray (Our Land) party list.
In 2002, he became a member of the Party of Regions, the political force behind the disgraced runaway ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. At that time, Yanukovych was prime minister and looked to be the anointed heir to the presidency in Ukraine. Joining Yanukovych’s party, Makeyenko jumped ship from the party of Viktor Yushchenko, on whose ticket he had won a seat in parliament earlier that year.
The events of the 2014 Orange Revolution showed that it was a bad choice. Yushchenko became president in 2004, overturning Yanukovych’s fraudulent election with the help of mass street protests.
However, Makeyenko stuck with Yanukovych until his fall in 2014. He announced he was leaving the president’s party on Feb. 20, 2014 – a day before Yanukovych fled Ukraine and abandoned his presidency, following the massacre of protesters at the end of the EuroMaidan Revolution.
But before that, he was involved in some of the most controversial events of that tumultuous winter – which did massive damage to his political career.
In the midst of the EuroMaidan Revolution, Yanukovych appointed Makeyenko head of Kyiv City State Administration – a position similar to the current post of mayor. On Feb. 18, 2014, Makeyenko gave an infamous order to close the subway system in the city to keep people away from the EuroMaidan as the authorities attempted to suppress the protests.
It was the first time in the history of Kyiv that the metro had stopped operating completely.
Makeyenko, however, claims he made the decision for safety reasons.
“If I went back to that moment, I would do the same thing. I came (to the Kyiv administration) with just one goal – to save people’s lives,” he said. “Unfortunately, many people died, but I’m sure we saved a lot of people.”
Makeyenko says he “can’t tell the full story of the metro’s closure now,” as he is one of the witnesses in the investigation of the massacre of the protesters at the end of the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Two days after taking the decision to close the metro, Makeyenko announced that he was no longer a member of the Party of Regions.
“A party in power that can’t reach agreement with its own people doesn’t have any right to stay in power,” he said, explaining his decision.
On Feb. 16, the protesters relinquished control over the city administration building, which they had held for two-and-a-half months, to Makeyenko, with the help of negotiators from the OSCE, in exchange for an amnesty for protesters. Today, Makeyenko appears very proud of this particular moment in the revolution.
“Why did the EuroMaidan representatives hand the building over to me, when they controlled it at that moment? Ah, if it’s Makeyenko, then that’s fine. They didn’t hand it over to (the ex-head of the administration Oleksandr) Popov or his deputies, but they let me in,” he said. “Apparently, I was that compromise person that all the parties were happy with.”
“Everybody knew who Makeyenko was,” he adds proudly.
That’s not how the protesters remember it, though.
“Makeyenko was lucky that no one knew who he was,” says Ruslan Andriyko, who was one of the activists controlling the building.
According to him, Makeyenko was little known and therefore less likely to provoke aggression from the protesters that were angered at the fact that they had to surrender the building.
Looking back, Makeyenko says he knows “amid this political mud-slinging I remained the person I always was.”
Lately, he and his team have been working on a draft of the Kyiv budget for the next year, which Makeyenko plans to implement after his victory.
“I’ve passed 17 state budgets, I know how to form a budget for the country, as well as for local councils,” he said.
Makeyenko also said he would audit the property of the city community, and root out corruption.
If he wins, Makeyenko promises to find a job in his administration for all of his rival candidates. The polls say such an outcome is highly unlikely, but he remains optimistic.
“Let’s wait for the results of the election,” Makeyenko smiled. “I bet you’ll be very surprised.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]
