You're reading: Korolevska: Our party is ‘definitely in opposition’

By now, Natalia Korolevska’s face is famous, thanks to many months of heavy advertising spending on billboards and TV by the leader of the new Ukraine-Forward Party.

But what she stands for – and who stands behind her – remain mysteries for many, even though she has recently published a 60-page book outlining her views.

These are important puzzles for voters to solve before the Oct. 28 vote. Polls show that Korolevska’s media blitz has put her star-studded party close to the 5 percent threshold for getting elected into parliament, giving her a potential kingmaker role in a close election.

To the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko, which kicked Korolevska out of the opposition faction in March, she is a traitor who is now a not-so-secret pet political project of President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Her mission, critics say, is to be a spoiler – to siphon off opposition votes by posing as an independent political force.

In an Aug. 17 interview with the Kyiv Post, however, Korolevska categorically denied that she would join the Party of Regions-led ruling coalition in the 450-seat legislature.

“Our political party is definitely in opposition to the Party of Regions and those in power. We are not going to unite with the Party of Regions and the parties which are now in coalition with them,” Korolevska said.

Natalia Korolevska, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Viktor Yanukovych during a parliament session in 2008.
They are all representing different political parties today. (UNIAN)

Still, suspicions abound about her high visibility, the sources of her funding and her unfettered access to advertising outlets and news programs, especially at a time when the administration is squeezing or imprisoning leading opposition leaders.

There are historical reasons to be cynical: Deputy Prime Sergiy Tigipko ran for president in 2010 as an oppositional leader of the new Strong Ukraine Party, only to join Yanukovych’s forces after the election.

A decade ago, the supposedly new and genuine Winter Crop Generation featured the likes of Valeriy Khoroshkovsky and Inna Bohoslovska, now administration fixtures.

Korolevska, a wealthy former businesswoman, definitely has money to spend, whether it’s her own or someone else’s.

Artem Bidenko, an advertising industry expert, estimates that Korolevska’s party in July spent about Hr 10 million on advertisements blaring off TV screens and covering billboards. While considerably less than the Party of Regions or the Communist Party, her spending is impressive.

Maksym Lazebnyk, head of the All-Ukrainian Advertising Coalition, said the spending spree is impressive – and revealing. “The funds are so huge that we can talk only about the richest people in the country” financing her, Lazebnyk said.

So where does the money come from? Not from oligarchs, said Korolevska.

“Read our party list,” Korolevska told the Kyiv Post. All the financing comes from party members, both on and off the list, she said, with famous footballer Andriy Shevchenko and current parliamentarian Yevhen Suslov, also a former member Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko, as her top backers. (Another star backer, more famous than rich, is Ostap Stupka, an actor and son of the late acting legend Bohdan Stupka.)

Shevchenko’s 2011 earnings – declared at just over Hr 13 million – would have barely covered Korolevska’s ad campaign for a month. Korolevska said she made Hr 167,000 in 2011, while Suslov received about Hr 200,000, according to their declarations.

However, as recently as 2008, Focus magazine estimated Korolevska’s net worth at $243 million. By 2012, she did not even crack the journal’s top 200 list, which would have required a fortune of at least $27 million.

Korolevska promised to publish the full report of her party’s expenses and contributions – but only after the elections, as required by law. But that may not be terribly revealing since a lot of her spending took place before the campaign’s official start at the end of July.

The 37-year old Korolevska was brought into parliament on Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna’s Party ticket in 2006 and 2007. She was in charge of Tymoshenko’s 2010 presidential campaign in Korolevska’s native Luhansk Oblast. Now Tymoshenko is in jail on charges widely to be trumped up, and Korolevska is looking more like Tymoshenko’s political double, having inherited her elegant dress style, her no-nonsense – even severe – manner and her spin.

She was elected party leader of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Party the same day Tymoshenko’s seven-year prison sentence was confirmed by the Court of Appeals on Dec. 23. The party was renamed into Ukraine-Forward shortly after.

In March, Korolevska was kicked out of the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko faction “for cooperation of this party with the president’s administration and the ruling regime,” the official statement said.

That was not the only accusation of betrayal. Her ex-allies say she failed to support a resolution by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe demanding the release of Tymoshenko. Korolevska shoots right back, saying Tymoshenko’s party leaders wanted to get rid of her to sell seats on the election list.

Korolevska, who was known to be quite close to Tymoshenko at one time, now says she has lost touch with her former boss. “I don’t write her letters,” she said, adding that she supports the release of Tymoshenko. “She has to be free, and only people voting on the elections should make judgment of her political actions.”

Korolevska remains critical of the president’s policies and Party of Regions. “The [economic] model of Party of Regions can take some 20 people to the top of the list of the world’s richest, but it can’t bring the country out of economic decay,” Korolevska said.

As a lawmaker, Korolevska used to be quite prolific, pushing for some useful initiatives for business.  Now she claims the government has blocked them all.

“I have raised issues of [Prime Minister Mykola] Azarov’s resignation not because I personally don’t like him, but because the laws that were adopted don’t work, and the small and middle business has been left to the mercy of small clerks. Of course, the president is responsible for everything in the country,” she said.

Her former Tymoshenko camp allies are not convinced.

People started to pay attention to her, started to listen her, but she has nothing to say— Viktor Nebozhenko, political analyst

“It is clear that even with big money it would be impossible to hold such a campaign without the support of those in power,” says Serhiy Pashynsky, a lawmaker from BYuT.

Some observers point to her Russian connections. Korolevska’s brother is a businessman living in Moscow, who used to hold the post of Russian deputy minister of regional development in 2010-2011. This has raised suspicions that she is a Kremlin project.

But Korolevska insists she’s a self-made businesswoman. She says she started her career in business at the age of 17, working as a secretary for her brother’s firm. Six years later she started her own business trading scrap metals, raising cattle and pigs and producing ice cream. The ice cream is available in most supermarkets under the Korolevske brand.

Her political luck – or skill – seems to have spread to her party members.

Shevchenko, for example, was allowed to run for parliament by the Central Election Commission despite the fact that he did not live in Ukraine for the last five years, as required by law. Until 2009, he played for Chelsea and lived in Britain. Other candidates with similar circumstances have been denied registration. Korolevska denies any favoritism. She says Shevchenko proved in court that he spent enough time in Ukraine during those years, playing for the national team, and the laws are vague enough to allow this loophole.

The party leader said Shevchenko is now working 14-hour days, campaigning all over Ukraine. But the slogans she campaigns on are mostly crowd-pleasers or clever-sounding buzzwords like “industrial parks.”

In her recently published book, which she said she wrote at night, Korolevska sets some spectacular goals. She says her ideas are capable of increasing the nation’s gross domestic product by 80 percent in the next five years (or 12.5 percent annual growth, while 2013 growth is estimated at 3.5 percent by the World Bank). This, she claims, would push average wages up to at least $1,200 a month, compared to around $360 currently.

The book was endorsed by prominent economists, including Igor Burakovsky and Aleksandr Paskhaver. But others are unimpressed, including Viktor Nebozhenko, a political analyst, who says Korolevska has nothing to offer.

“The huge financial abilities and support of the authorities played a cruel joke on her,” Nebozhenko says. “People started to pay attention to her, started to listen her, but she has nothing to say.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected].