Despite allegations of corruption and his recent conflict with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kyiv residents still want incumbent mayor and former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko to stay on the job.
According to a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology between Oct.11 and Oct.22, 36.6% of 803 respondents said they would vote for Klitschko in a race for mayor — enough to let him hold onto his position for a second term.
By contrast, only 18% of respondents said they would vote for Oleksandr Tkachenko, a member of parliament with Zelensky’s Servant of the People party who was previously the General Director of 1+1 Media Group, a company owned by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.
Tkachenko, who is Klitschko’s main political rival, blames the current mayor for the city’s ills.
“We have a mayor who has not even managed to spend more than half of Kyiv’s budget on social and economic development, the direction which requires the most investments,” Tkachenko wrote on his Facebook page on Oct. 24.
According to city residents, 34.4% feel that Klitschko’s activity in Kyiv has been positive compared to 31% who evaluated his effect as negative.
Furthermore, Tkachenko has faced intensified criticism in recent days. In a video posted to YouTube on Oct. 22, veteran and activist Yaroslav Bondarenko alleged that Tkachenko owned an undeclared villa on Trukhaniv Island, a protected area in Kyiv. The villa, he said, blocks free passage to the Dnipro River, which is forbidden by law.
Tkachenko denied the accusations, saying that he just rented the villa for half of the year.
With 12.6% support, Andriy Palchevsky — a Ukrainian businessman, broadcaster and political figure with close ties to Russia — took third in the poll. Palchevsky owns Eurolab, a medical laboratory with connections to shady offshore holdings via a residential address in Essex, England, the Kyiv Post previously reported.
Coincidence or not, Eurolab was Volodymyr Zelensky’s choice for a drug test to demonstrate he did not have an alcohol or drug addiction as a presidential candidate.
Residents were also split when asked if they felt Kyiv is developing in the right direction: 44.6% said yes, while 44.5% answered no.
Last month, the Kyiv Post reported that Zelensky and Klitschko were embroiled in a conflict. In September, the mayor was fired from his position as head of the city’s administration — an office traditionally also held by the mayor — which significantly reduced his power in the city.
