Mariupol mayor wants to put his city on map as tourism, investment destination - Nov. 14, 2019

MARIUPOL, Ukraine — So much attention was a rare treat for Vadym Boychenko.

As the mayor of Mariupol, the largest Ukrainian government-controlled city in Donetsk Oblast, Boychenko was used to dealing with local affairs in his city.

Then, at the end of October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky brought a major international investment forum to the port city of half a million people located 720 kilometers to the southeast of Kyiv on the Azov Sea.

For a day, the cream of Ukraine’s political and financial elite —hundreds of representatives of Ukrainian and foreign companies, international financial organizations, diplomatic corps and the Cabinet of Ministers — flocked to the remote city just 30 kilometers from the front line of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The attendees praised Zelensky’s move to bring international investors to the war-affected Donbas. For many, the visit to Mariupol was their first excursion so far into the east of Ukraine and so close to the war front. Many were surprised to find a safe, developing city.

“It was a great promotion for Mariupol,” Boychenko told the Kyiv Post in an interview after the forum.

Boychenko’s term in office has coincided with challenging times.

After the war erupted in the east in 2014, Mariupol withstood a brief occupation by pro-Russian militants and came under shelling several times, but did not see major destruction. Since Ukrainian government lost control over Donetsk, the capital of the eponymous oblast, the second largest city, Mariupol, grew in significance and sheltered over 90,000 displaced persons.

Today, Mariupol is squeezed between the ongoing war on the ground and the imminent threat of Russian aggression in the Azov Sea. It is also a stronghold of Ukraine’s richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, whose steel plants both feed the city and poison it with toxic emissions.

Successes

According to the 2018 municipal ranking by the Rating pollster, Boychenko has succeeded in his job as mayor, receiving the approval of 70 percent of his constituents. And Mariupol has received plaudits for its openness and innovative approach to governance.

But the mayor says he is not reinventing the wheel.

“We borrow a lot of ideas and learn from other (cities),” he says. “If there is something good in Mariupol, I saw it somewhere.”

The Ukrainian office of Transparency International has ranked Mariupol the second most transparent city in the country based on an evaluation of the cities’ finances, the accountability of the authorities, its engagement of citizens in decision-making processes, and public procurement.

Mariupol was also listed among the safest cities in the country. Boychenko says they have reduced street crime by a third thanks to a smart surveillance system installed in the city.

He also oversaw the revitalization of the city’s downtown and a cultural revival program aimed at educating citizens about Mariupol’s history and attracting visitors through various festivals.

The 42-year-old mayor wants to continue these developments. He is planning to run for re-election next year.

“We have attracted 160 million euros from international partners, and I would like to transform (the money) into tangible projects: clean drinking water, public transport, street lighting, waste sorting, and a promenade,” he said. “I want to finish what I have started. Then it will not be embarrassing to think about my further career.”

Boychenko has just secured nearly 100 million euros in loans from the French government and the European Investment Bank for the construction of a water treatment plant and the modernization of the water distribution network.

In 2024, Mariupol residents will be able to drink clean tap water, he says.

French specialists are also working on redesigning the city’s seafront into a comfortable walking zone.

Boychenko’s agenda includes improving public utilities and municipal services, building a water park and promoting Mariupol as a destination for domestic tourism and a place people will choose to call home.

“Today, young people do not choose countries. They choose cities. For example, they choose London and not England,” he said. “I want to enter this competition. We can become a major city in Ukraine. I want youth to move to Mariupol, not out of it,” he said.

Thanks to Ukraine’s decentralization reform, city authorities gained more control over local budgets. Boychenko says he managed to optimize city spending, and today nearly 40 percent of the yearly $100 million budget goes into investment into various city projects.

But Boychenko believes war-affected Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts deserve a special status that would increase the portion of income tax revenues allocated to the local budgets by another 15 percent. Currently, they receive only 60 percent.

“We pitched this idea to the president. While we are waiting for some colossal investment and partners, we can take advantage of the existing internal financial resources,” he said.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko speaks on the stage of Re:Think investment forum held on Oct. 29, 2019, under the auspices of President Volodymyr Zelensky in Mariupol. (Photo by Oleg Petrasiuk)

Infrastructure

Mariupol long felt isolated from the rest of the country. The only daily train from Kyiv to the port city took over 18 hours.

Recently, state railways added two additional daily trains, cutting travel time from the capital to 15 hours. Boychenko is lobbying for further reduction to 12 hours.

“We talked with the infrastructure minister (and said) that the travel time by train has to be reduced. You (should) leave Kyiv at 8 p.m. and arrive in Mariupol at 8 a.m,” Boychenko said.

Moreover, a new 225-kilometer highway, inaugurated before the Oct. 29 forum, replaced a broken road connecting Mariupol with Zaporizhia, a city with an international airport and a 7-hour fast train from Kyiv. The ride between the two cities now takes three hours instead of five. Mariupol’s own airport has been closed since 2014, and as long as the fighting continues, there are no prospects of its re-opening.

Mariupol is one of the largest trade ports in the country. But its seaport continues to suffer losses due to restrictions imposed by Russia after it constructed a bridge across the Kerch Strait linking the illegally occupied Crimean peninsula with the Russian mainland.

Russian authorities have limited the height of vessels that can pass through the canal and increased the time required for clearance. Additionally, Russia has been expanding its military presence in the Azov Sea in defiance of its common share treaties with Ukraine.

The tensions culminated when the Russian Coast Guard attacked Ukrainian navy vessels and took 24 Ukrainian sailors prisoner in November 2018. In response, Ukraine imposed 30 days of martial law in a number of border cities, including Mariupol.

“It used to be worse,” Boychenko said of the current state of business at the port. “There are still issues but the situation is not as critical as it was at the beginning of the year.”

The port mainly handles steel produced by the city’s metallurgical giant, Metinvest Holding, but prospects of diversification are on the horizon.

At the Mariupol forum, the sea ports administration announced it would build a grain terminal, and Chinese state food corporation COFCO pledged to flow at least 1.2 million tons of cargo through the port to increase overall turnover.

Azovstal steel plant seen from the Mariupol fish port on July 27, 2018. (Photo by Kostyantyn Chernichkin)

Air pollution

Amid many positive changes in Mariupol, one issue remains: the city has long suffered from toxic pollution caused by two steel plants owned by Metinvest, Azovstal and the Ilyich plant.

City residents have taken to the streets demanding the plants reduce chemical emissions and have accused mayor Boychenko of going easy on his former employer, Metinvest, and its oligarch owners. Prior to going into politics, Boychenko had a successful corporate career. He rose from a locomotive repairman at Azovstal to the director for human resources and social issues at Metinvest Holding.

The mayor says that industrial emissions are not in his purview. Rather, the ecology ministry sets the allowable emissions limits for industrial enterprises.

At the same time, the ecology ministry lists Azovstal and Ilyich as among the largest polluters of air and water in the country.

In this confrontation, the mayor seems to be defending the company. Metinvest is modernizing the equipment on its plants, he says, and it has pledged to allocate $400 million in the next five years to reduce air pollution from its plants in Mariupol, Kryvyi Rih, and Zaporizhia.

Oligarch’s influence

Mariupol has long been viewed as the stronghold of billionaire Rinat Akhmetov and the political party he backs, the Opposition Bloc, which originated with the now-disbanded pro-Russian Party of Regions.

Akhmetov’s largest asset in the city is indeed Metinvest Holding, which controls two steel producing plants and two machinery and repair plants and employs nearly 40,000 people.

Mayor Boychenko denies Akhmetov exerts political influence on the city administration.

“Metinvest works legally and pays taxes. Moreover, only 30 percent of all taxes collected (for the city budget) come from it. The rest comes from the utilities sector,” he said.

But the oligarch’s influence is deep. He also owns local media assets: two television channels, the city’s only daily newspaper and a news website. The majority of city administration officials, including Boychenko himself, are former Metinvest employees. The holding is also the main sponsor of the Mariupol development fund founded by Boychenko.

Boychenko said he ran for mayor because of public support for aid work he did in neighborhoods and villages damaged by shelling as Metinvest’s director for social issues.

“I was nominated for mayor three months before the election with a rating of 3 percent. Nobody believed I would win,” he said. “I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was like Zelensky’s phenomenon.”

Much like Zelensky in the 2019 presidential election, political newcomer Boychenko won in December 2015 in a landslide with 74 percent of the vote.

But his victory was not without a hitch. Backed by Akhmetov-owned media and Metinvest, he won on his second attempt after the first vote was blocked by the local election commission over suspicions of voting fraud.

This year, Akhmetov’s dominance yielded more political benefits for him. In July, Mariupol elected two independent candidates to the parliament: Vadym Novynskyi, the oligarch’s business partner and 25-percent shareholder in Metinvest Holding, and Serhiy Magera, a former employee of the holding.

Boychenko also ran for parliament with Opposition Bloc, but says he did not plan to become a lawmaker and entered the party list only to help it win seats.