Among the ranks of Oleksandr Turchynov’s campaign team are dubious personalities who could outclass Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy’s cohorts.
Intelligence versus strength. This is the way the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc intends to play its hand in the mayoral competition. “Kyiv needs an intelligent mayor,” Oleksandr Turchynov’s advertising banners exhorts Kyivans. His reputation of a godly intellectual is supposed to outweigh Vitali Klitschko’s image of strength.
However, Tymoshenko political operators remain silent on how to deal with the reputation of Turchunov’s team. Among its ranks are dubious personalities who would be able to outclass incumbent Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy’s cohorts.
Turchynov doesn’t smoke or drink. For seven years, he’s been a member of the Evangelical Christian-Baptist Church, which only allows a sip of wine during communion.
“He sleeps three hours a night,” assured Volodymyr Kunets, pastor of the Word of Life Center. Here he sometimes delivers sermons, for which politicians have given him the nickname “pastor.”
When asked whether Baptists support Turchynov for elections, Kunets answered, “I think so. I never campaign, of course. But when I am asked who to vote for, I can say who I wouldn’t vote for.” About 30 Baptist churches operate in Kyiv, with their membership close to 20,000 Kyiv residents.
Lying on a table in the pastor’s lobby are a pile of Bibles, next to which is an equally high pile of Turchynov’s last book, “Report Card.” It’s the politician’s third work which made its way to bookstores in recent years.
The prior two are fiction which the politician himself deemed intellectual thrillers. About 30,000 copies were published for the novel “Illusion of Fear” – that’s high compared to the few thousand that most popular Ukrainian authors achieve.
“Report Card” is Turchynov’s autobiography: the path of Tymoshenko’s right hand man from childhood to the high seat of power.
Teachers at Middle School No. 1 in Dnipropetrovsk remember their student Turchynov as always calm and silent. His first teacher, Vira Hordiyenko, said Turchynov was an excellent student. He had unusually nice handwriting for a boy, with lengthy, high letters, and his favorite subjects were physical education and mathematics she said. “The pull towards science was already there in his childhood,” Hordiyenko said.
Her colleague, kindergarten teacher Olena Boyko, who studied in a class parallel with Turchynov’s in her time, said he always offered to let others copy his work and was a true gentleman.
After graduating school, Turchynov went to the National Metallurgical Academy.
Turchynov was an active Komsomolets, said lecturers of the academy’s metal-working department. Between 1987 and 1990, Turchynov served as head of the agitation and propaganda division of the Dnipropetrovsk Komsomol Oblast Committee, which was led by Serhiy Tihipko.
Turchynov began his road to Kyiv politics in the early 1990s. Still young but already full of prospects, Tihipko became acquainted with someone who had even more prospects, the director of Dnipropetrovsk’s Pivdenmash, Leonid Kuchma.
When Kuchma became prime minister in 1992, Tihipko, along with his entire team, which included Turchynov, moved to Kyiv.
Turchynov became an advisor to Kuchma on macroeconomic issues. “Turchynov was always a good organizer,” said his former Batkischyna fellow party member Mykhaylo Brodskiy. “Together with another advisor, Viktor Chayka, they hired Dmytro Tabachnyk, Serhiy Osyka and others.”
In 1994, Turchynov created the Hromada political party, which Pavlo Lazarenko agreed to lead. It was on Hromada’s electoral list that Turchynov made it to parliament. When excluded, Hromada, Turchynov and Tymoshenko create Batkivschyna, which Tymoshenko leads to this day.
Brodskiy, leader of the Party of Free Democrats, remembered how Turchynov, together with former Member of Parliament (MP) Chernovetskiy, helped the pastor of the Embassy of God Church Sunday Adeladzha avoid visa problems. When Adeladzha arrived in Ukraine, he had visa problems and was nearly deported.
Turchynov and Chernovetskiy organized a collection of signatures in parliament in support of the pastor, and the conflict was resolved.
Turchynov is not involved with business, living in the so-called Writers’ Building on Bohdan Khmelnytskiy Street, not far from the opera house.
His wife Anna teaches English at the Drahomanov National Pedagogical University in Kyiv.
Ayna Haponenko, the former wife of Tymoshenko Bloc MP Anatoliy Semynoha and currently Tymoshenko’s personal designer, acknowledged Turchynov’s wife is a close friend of the prime minister.
“We offered Kyiv the best that we have,” Tymoshenko said when presenting Turchynov as the bloc’s candidate for the mayor’s post. The prime minister’s decision on Turchynov’s candidacy seems like walking a thin line. His candidacy was discussed in the bloc long before, but the matter never went beyond the chattering.
Also, nothing was done for Kyivans to at least consider whether they want to see Turchynov as their mayor. “For its candidate, the Tymoshenko Bloc believes people will vote not for a person, but for a representative of its team,” said Kyiv political expert Taras Berezovets. “Even before the official start of the election campaign, no one could boast a better rating in the bloc than his,” he added.
The results of the next presidential election are largely dependent on the results of the pre-term Kyiv mayoral election. If the Tymoshenko Bloc has an excellent result, it will be a sign of the nation’s business elite around whom it’s worth orienting for the presidential election, according to Berezovets.
The Tymoshenko Bloc already has the majority in the Kyiv Oblast Council, and now it’s necessary to gain control of the Kyiv City Council, having 61 deputies is not enough, Berezovets said, the mayor’s chair is needed. Therefore it’s no surprise that Tymoshenko placed her wager on the person she trusts most.
Turchynov’s campaign ideas differ little from the incumbent’s declared initiatives, or those of any other candidate.
They’re nothing new; land, traffic jams and utilities. “I don’t plan to surprise anyone or put on a show,” Turchunov told Novynar. “We have big problems in the real estate market. They are related to opaque schemes and the absence of an elaborated auction process. The single scheme which can cross out corruption are transparent, open auctions. No other mechanism exists in the fight against corruption.”
Relations between Tymoshenko and Turchynov were not always sunny, Brodskiy said. “Before the 2006 election, she tried to get rid of him,” he said. “Moreover, he even called her a typical Yanukovych. I remember how he suggested to me to leave her altogether. The conflict was over Yulia wanting to include in the electoral list Oleksandr Volkov (a close Kuchma ally), and we didn’t want to. I supported him then, but he didn’t support me afterwards.”
Brodskiy suggests this time around. Tymoshenko wants to do what she couldn’t in 2006. “His weight in the party recently became bigger than usual,” he said. “Tymoshenko’s ambitions can’t allow for that. On certain issues, he even began to surpass her. If she wins the presidential election, Turchynov will occupy her throne in the bloc. For Tymoshenko, losing first place and control is the worst that can be imagined.”
Brodskiy foresees Tymoshenko won’t publicly chase away Turchynov, but can play off his principled position. “He will gain 8 to 9 percent, she will tell him that he, so to speak, let her down and that is his top dollar,” he said. “And then one of two things: either he gets offended and leaves, or he becomes simply fully tamed. Tymoshenko’s underhandedness lies in that,” he added.
The bloc’s electoral list of candidates also raises quite a few questions.
Tymoshenko leads it, followed by Turchynov, Mykola Tomenko, Oleksandr Zinchenko and actor Anatoliy Khostikoyev. Few believe these individuals, excluding Zinchenko, will show up at council sessions, and even the deputy from the prior convocation Khostikoyev hardly appeared.
Relatives of famous politicians dot the list. Among them is Volodmyr Seminoha (15th), the brother of the chair of the Tymoshenko Bloc’s Kyiv campaign headquarters; Inna Novak, the wife of Presidential Secretariat Deputy Chair Oleksandr Chaliy (22nd) and Oleh Kurovskiy (32nd), the son of MP Ivan Kurovskiy.
It’s Ivan Kurovskiy who is the coowner of the Zhytlobud construction company, which is responsible for the controversial construction on Kyiv’s Zhovtneviy Hospital’s land, said Irena Kilchytska, a deputy mayor. “And also the illegal construction in the capital’s central district, on Turgenevskiy, Nekrasova and Dokuchayevskiy streets, as well as the Klovskiy Slope,” she said.
The lion’s share of the list consists of Bohdan Hubskiy’s people, who are involved in the construction business and are very interested in Kyiv land, but have nothing in common with the Tymoshenko Bloc or Batkivschyna.
Among them are Roman Steynas (29th), whose name is associated with the Velyka Kyshenia supermarket network, Vasyl Senchuk, director of the capital’s Technical Inventory Bureau (BTI), Denys Moskal, director of the Kashtanove Misto, Oleksandr Kozis, the administration chair of UkrAvto who enjoys ties with Tymoshenko Bloc MP Tariel Vasadze; and Vitaliy Hnatushenko, assistant main chair of Naftogaz of Ukraine, who has good relations with Vitaliy Hayduk, among the coowners of the Industrial Union of Donbass who is close with Tymoshenko.
“Having such a political team, I believe we will be able to restore Kyiv’s greatness,” Turchynov said. “That’s the main thing we are offering Kyivans.”
Brodskiy is confident this team doesn’t differ at all from Chernovetskiy’s team when it comes to land issues. He claims 16 of 50 spaces on the Tymoshenko Bloc’s electoral list were bought. “Bohdan Hubskiy sold them for between $3 and $5 million,” he said. “The payment was strictly in cash without bank transfers. Within the Tymoshenko Bloc, such deputies are called A students. Bring three Xerox paper boxes full of hundreddollar bills – good guy, you’ll be a deputy.”
Hubskiy’s press service denied such accusations, and the deputy himself was unavailable for comment.
The Tymoshenko Bloc’s campaign, whose unofficial director is Hubskiy, is located in the MP’s office on Shota Rustaveli Street, Brodskiy said.
“All the district campaign staffs in the capital are also led by his people,” Brodskiy said. “This is a serious kush, a serious wager from him, and it’s understood that he’s playing seriously.”
