You're reading: Yatseniuk started as nation’s best hope, but has fizzled out as vote draws near

What went wrong with his campaign?

Arseniy Yatseniuk

Age: 35

Hometown: Chernivtsi

Education: Chernivtsi State University (1996), Chernivtsi Trade and Economic Institute (2001)

Career: Lawyer, politician

Political posts: Acting Economy Minister, Crimea (2001), National Bank of Ukraine chairman (2003-2005), Odesa Oblast deputy governor (2005), deputy head of the presidential secretariat (2006), Foreign Minister (2007), Parliament Speaker

Campaign slogan: “New direction”

Family status: Married, two children

Famous quote: “The parliament has turned into fast food, a McDonald’s churning out laws. If you could only know how they write these laws! Every party writes a line for itself.”

VINNYTSIA, Ukraine — He was perceived initially as Ukraine’s new hope, like America’s Barack Obama. Yet Arseniy Yatseniuk’s campaign became more reminiscent of the tragic fate of Icarus.

At 35, Yatseniuk is the youngest of the presidential candidates. He had a quick rise in business and politics, dazzled international audiences with his fluent English at Davos and the local annual Yalta summit, both sponsored by billionaire and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk.

But his luck changed suddenly in the summer of 2009, when an opponent accused him of being an “impudent Jew,” and after the candidate himself plastered the nation with military-styled billboards that launched a color-coded campaign for reviving the nation’s military, economy, education and industry. The Soviet-style messages contrasted his youth, confusing and turning off voters already suspicious of his financial backing.

The public saw through the mismatch. The tough guy on the billboards never served in the army and clashed with his more authentic persona as a bespectacled and brainy overachiever.

“His ads are made a little too striking. He put in a little too much, and that intimidates people. I think people will like it more if he’d add a little (subduing) color,” said small business owner Oleksandr Yanbekov in Vinnytsia.

Not only the public was disappointed, but so were some of his financial backers. They reportedly included billionaires Pinchuk, the son-in-law of ex-president Leonid Kuchma; gas tycoon Dmytro Firtash and real estate magnate Leonid Yurushev. Of them, only Yurushev is believed to remain as Yatseniuk’s sponsor.

Apart from revitalizing industry and education, Yatseniuk sought to rebuild the military in order to join international security organizations. But he backpedaled on earlier support for NATO membership and he talked in general terms about a foreign policy in which Ukraine is everyone’s friend.

“The idea is to have strong links,” he told the Kyiv Post in an interview. “Between the European Union countries, between non-European Union countries, between Russia, Ukraine, between Ukraine and the European Union countries starting on a multi-lateral level, with mutual economic projects and ending with security agreements, I mean security agreements on the bilateral level.”

Yatseniuk supports Ukrainian as the official language but is against discrimination of Russian-langue speakers. He supports Ukrainian culture and wants to build “a strong state,” Yatseniuk said in an interview. “It’s about strong institutions. It’s about a state that takes care of its citizens, on the other hand, citizens are responsible, and they [must] think about their contribution to this country.”

Yatseniuk was born in Chervnitsi to a family of university professors. Growing up, he enjoyed collecting postage stamps. In 1992, his second year of university studies, he founded Yurek Ltd. law firm and hired the son of that region’s governor. In his official autobiography, Yatseniuk wrote that, as president of Yurek Ltd., he represented clients in courts of arbitration and also participated in the privatization of state enterprises.

He counted regionally influential people among his clients. Among them were Vitaliy Bilous, who was twice convicted for extortion and was reputedly a member of a local crime group, and Valeriy Chynush, a Chernivtsi city council member who introduced him to other influential politicians.

Ihor Pluzhnikov, the deceased former owner of Inter TV channel and former close associate of ex-presidential chief of staff Victor Medvedchuk, is also reported to have been a client and associate of Yatseniuk in the early years.

Yatseniuk is said to have impressed one of the lawyers of a leading Ukrainian bank, Aval, during a legal dispute by quoting verbatim a passage in a legal textbook that one of the opposing lawyers had written. By 1998, when he was just 24, he was already working as a consultant for Aval’s Kyiv office. He became the bank’s deputy chairman before resigning in 2001 to embark on a political career.

While young, he has held more top positions than most political veterans nearly twice his age.

As parliament speaker in 2007, he is credited with persuading parliamentarians that Ukraine would benefit by joining the World Trade Organization, which it did in 2008. He was also behind some crucial decisions taken by the National Bank during the height of the Orange Revolution, which allowed the currency to stay strong through a major crisis.

As foreign minister in 2007, he was described as a professional who sought compromises and didn’t rouse the ire of Russia or resentment from the West, and displayed similar qualities as parliament speaker. “Yatseniuk demonstrated that he doesn’t struggle for personal gain or power, which is quite exceptional for a Ukrainian politician,” said Serhiy Taran, director of the International Democracy Institute.

Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko wrote of him that “extraordinary professional knowledge and know-how with a tough, sometimes cynical, business-like grasp while knowing how to engage in bureaucratic intrigue.”

Despite his expected flop in this election campaign, experts said Yatseniuk has a bright political future ahead. The Front of Change, his newly-created party, has every chance of passing the 3 percent threshold needed for representation in parliament.

Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].