A former owner of a large media holding, Lozhkin gave only a handful of interviews in his life and rarely makes public appearances since taking office in June 2014.
So when on March 16 Lozhkin unexpectedly released a book, titled “The Fourth Republic,” it grabbed the attention of many.
Surprise book
Lozhkin upped the buzz by throwing a posh presentation party that was one of the most discussed social and political events in Kyiv of recent months.
It took place in the Intercontinental Hotel, a popular place for political meet-ups, and attracted all the top politicians, including Lozhkin’s boss and former business partner, President Petro Poroshenko. The party cost Lozhkin Hr 668,000, he told Ukrainska Pravda.
The book’s full title is “The Fourth Republic. Why Europe Needs Ukraine and Ukraine, Europe.” It was released in Russian and Ukrainian. The English version is coming in April, according to the publishing house. Lozhkin writes that the book is targeted at Ukraine’s Western partners, as well as the audience within the country.
The name is a reference to the history of Ukraine. Lozhkin counts four stages of the Ukrainian state: Ukraine People’s Republic that existed in 1917-1919, Soviet Ukraine in 1919-1991, independent Ukraine before the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2014, and post-EuroMaidan Ukraine – the fourth republic.
In the 250 pages and 11 chapters Lozhkin focuses on the opportunities that Ukraine has thanks to the revolution and the challenge of using them.
He supports the idea of a technocrat government and advocates intense, even painful reforms.
The book is well-researched and filled with charts backing Lozhkin’s ideas on how Ukraine should be reformed.
Lozhkin, who admits working 16 hours a day, couldn’t have time to write it all by himself. So he paired with Vladimir Fedorin, former editor-in-chief of Ukraine’s Forbes magazine, which was a part of Lozhkin’s media empire.
According to Lozhkin, the two worked on the book on Sundays. A big chunk of the work was done in September of 2015, when Lozhkin had a surgery and spent 10 days in an Israeli clinic. They finished the writing in December.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (C) speaks as Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk (2R), Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, Speaker of the Parliament Alexander Turchynov (2L) and the President Chief of Staff Borys Lozhkin (L) attend during the opening of the extraordinary sitting of the National Security and Defence Council in Kiev on August 28, 2014.
Convenient omissions
Although the book is well-written and reads easily, it leaves a feeling that author didn’t say much.
While one easily agrees with the progressive views of Lozhkin (he even advocates gay marriage – something that few officials would dare to say in Ukraine), the author remains a mystery in many ways.
He also made many convenient omissions.
The part of Lozhkin’s biography that raises many questions, his sale of Ukrainian Media Holding to Serhiy Kurchenko, takes a little more than one page of his book. Kurchenko, an oligarch associated with the family of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, reportedly paid 315 million euros for the company in 2013. Lozhkin offers a poor explanation of the sale.
He writes that he was looking to sell the company and Kurchenko was the only real buyer. He also says that Kurchenko wanted the media holding for himself, while many saw the purchase as an attempt of Yanukovych’s circle to take over the influential magazines from the holding (one of them, Forbes, published an investigation on Kurchenko one year prior to the purchase) in the face of the approaching presidential election of 2015.
Lozhkin says he had no problems selling his company to the murky oligarch.
“All the oligarchs have skeletons in their closets,” he writes when describing the sale. “Does it mean that one can’t make a transparent deal with them? In my opinion, it doesn’t.”
But the deal wasn’t transparent. In 2015, Austrian authorities investigated Lozhkin in a case of suspected money laundering. An offshore company co-owned by Lozhkin transferred $130 million through an Austrian bank account.
According to lawmaker and former investigative journalist Serhiy Leshchenko, it was part of the money that Kurchenko paid Lozhkin for the media holding he bought. The investigation was closed in the end of 2015, while Lozhkin was still working on his book. The book has no mention of the scandal.
This isn’t the only drawback of the book.
Lozhkin avoids criticizing his boss Poroshenko. In protecting his decisions he goes as far as praising Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin – the most condemned of the Poroshenko’s appointments.
While Lozhkin mentions the mistakes of Ukrainian authorities and the slow pace of reforms, he doesn’t hurry to take any responsibility for it. Often he seems to be writing as an observer, not a participant of the events.
But by the time the book was released the author had spent over 1.5 years at one of the highest posts in the country and therefore bears responsibility for the failures of the authorities, of which there was plenty.
However, in his narrative Lozhkin takes an innocent stand, offering no explanation for any of the accusations thrown at his boss or himself over this time.
In the book, Lozhkin says that the winter and spring of 2016 are the critical time for Ukraine to take the path of deep reforms. After it, the window of opportunity closes.
This statement is especially interesting in the course of the current political events. As Poroshenko Bloc in parliament attempts to create a new coalition and reshuffle the government, Lozhkin is reportedly considered for a job of a deputy prime minister with a focus on economics.
Referring to these rumors, one of Ukrainian journalists wittingly called Lozhkin’s book “a very lengthy CV of a job applicant.”
Following footprints of Kuchma
Writing books isn’t an unusual occupation for Ukraine’s top officials.
Former President Leonid Kuchma put a start to the tradition, authoring six books, all of them on Ukraine and its politics. He started his writing career with “I Believe in Ukrainian People” (2000), and ended it with “The Broken Decade” (2010). The most famous book by Kuchma was “Ukraine is not Russia”(2003), published two years before the end of Kuchma’s second presidential term.
Ukraine’s most unfortunate ruler, former president Viktor Yanukovych, authored “To Act and Win,” a compilation of vain photographs and notes. The book wasn’t found in bookstores, yet Yanukovych declared being paid Hr 16 million in royalties for it. (Lozhkin received a symbolic honorarium of Hr 100 for his book).
Several of Yanukovych’s cronies who escaped the country with their leader after the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014 have since published books where they muse about the wrong path that Ukraine took when it ousted Yanukovych and themselves. The latest publication of the kind is “The Bloody Maidan” by former Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko, released in late March.
Finally, there’s an example of Oleksandr Turchynov, who was the acting president of Ukraine for several months in 2014. Unlike other politicians, he writes fiction. He authored seven thriller novels with titles like “The Illusion of Fear” and “The Testimony.” One of them was made into a movie, for which Turchynov wrote a screenplay.
