The nation is on its honeymoon with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Eight weeks after becoming president, Zelensky has an approval rating of 70 percent, according to recent surveys. His Servant of the People party leads the polls with up to 50 percent support.
Following the July 21 parliamentary elections, Zelensky is expected to bring at least 120 people into the Verkhovna Rada on his party ticket — and many others through single-member districts, out of 422 total seats.
Very little is known about the people who will ride into the Verkhovna Rada on his coattails, yet voters — still in the mood for change — don’t seem to care.
Zelensky promised to bring new faces into politics, and his party list reflects it. There are no former lawmakers or top officials among his candidates. Most of them are little-known even to political observers.
“Even Google knows little about them,” said Vita Dumanska, coordinator of the Chesno civic watchdog, which analyzed the list. “They’re betting on a well-known brand.”
The party claims to have chosen its candidates through an open competition based on professionalism after viewing more than 3,500 applicants. But the list reveals that many of the chosen candidates are associated with Zelensky or people from his circle.
A closer look at the names also shows some controversial figures. They include a friend of notorious pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, a relative of Kharkiv Mayor Gennady Kernes and a businesswoman who still runs a firm in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Party list
Zelensky’s party campaigns with 201 candidates in its list. On July 8, they made the final amendments to their ticket, following criticism from the public. But experts still have complaints about it.
Chesno’s Dumanska said the party removed only one candidate from its list out of the four who, according to the Central Election Commission, likely have dual citizenship, which is banned under Ukrainian law.
One of the remaining candidates is Andriy Kholodov, No. 22 on the party list. He is a deputy head of Tekam Plius, a wholesale company. He also has a personal link to pro-Russian politician Medvedchuk.
In June 2018, Oksana Marchenko, Medvedchuk’s wife, became a godmother of Kholodov’s son. She posted photos with Kholodov and his wife to her Instagram page. Medvedchuk was present at the ceremony.
Moreover, journalists at Schemes, an investigative unit of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, discovered that Kholodov spent at least 204 days abroad in 2018. The law says that any candidate for parliament should live in Ukraine for five years prior to the election.
Kholodov wasn’t available for comment. The party’s spokeswoman, Tetiana Tsyba, refused to comment on the candidate’s connections.
Another controversial candidate is Volodymyr Kozak, No. 67 on the list. He is a lawyer and an entrepreneur from the Svarog West Group, which specializes in growing and exporting agricultural produce. The group belongs to brothers Serhiy and Oleksandr Buryak, former members of ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
Investigative reporter Yevheniia Motorevska from Slidstvo.Info discovered family and business links between Kozak and Kernes, the mayor of Kharkiv, who opposed the EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted the corrupt Yanukovych in 2014. In 2018, Kozak acquired a food processing company from Kernes’s middle son Daniil Privalov. Privalov is married to Kozak’s sister.
There are also several people in the list linked to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Avakov’s former long-term adviser, lawmaker Anton Gerashchenko.
Dumanska said that Chesno found 38 people on the list who appear to be aides to current lawmakers.
“So not all the candidates have no connection to politics,” she said.
Single-member districts
Two of Zelensky’s candidates appear to have dual citizenship, according to the Central Election Commission. They are Oleksandr Kunytsky and Valery Bozhyk.
Kunytsky is a blogger who campaigns in Kharkiv city. He admitted to having an Israeli passport during a recent meeting with voters, according to a report by Suspilne: Kharkiv. He also claimed to have applied to renounce his Israeli citizenship.
On July 11, the Central Election Commission banned Kunytsky from running. However, he can still appeal the decision.
Bozhyk is a lawyer running for parliament in the city of Khotyn in Chernivtsi Oblast. Maksym Burbak, a lawmaker from the 80-member People’s Front faction in parliament who is running for reelection in the same district, claimed in June that Bozhyk has Romanian citizenship and showed local journalists document that appeared to prove this allegation. Bozhyk claimed Bukbak was lying in order to knock him out of the race.
Iryna Borzova, running in the city of Zhmerynka in Vinnytsia Oblast, is the wife of Serhiy Borzov, executive head of the state agency that manages the property of the president, parliament, and Cabinet of Ministers. Borzov is also a former performer in KVN, a student comedy competition where Zelensky got his start.
Borzova runs a restaurant business, including business in Sudak, a city in Russia-annexed Crimea. Chesno found that Borzova re-registered her business under Russian legislation. In 2018, Borzova told Chesno that the business is managed by her father, and she is just a beneficiary of it. She claimed she doesn’t travel to Crimea but can’t leave the business in which she has invested a lot of money.
“What can I do?.. I have no other choice because the state didn’t defend my business, the business of my family,” she said.
Many of Zelensky’s candidates in single-member constituencies also have links to Kolomoisky, including journalists from Kolomoisky’s 1+1 TV channel or members of the UKROP party, also linked to the oligarch. The Liga news website counted more than 20 of Kolomoisky’s people among them.
In Kyiv, there are also candidates linked to Kyiv developer Andriy Vavrysh, who is a friend of Andriy Bohdan, Zelensky’s chief of staff. Vavrysh’s company is now preparing the plan for the new presidential office, which will be relocated to the Ukrainian House building on Khreshchatyk Street.
Another interesting candidate is restaurateur Mykola Tyshchenko, who is running with president’s party in Kyiv. He used to be the target of Zelensky’s satire.
In 2018, Zelensky, then an actor in the Kvartal 95 comedy show, parodied Tyshchenko’s performance in the Dancing with the Stars TV show, portraying him as a narcissist alpha male in a skit on TV. Tyshchenko recently told journalists he wasn’t offended by that.
Kyiv Post staff writer Vyacheslav Hnatyuk contributed to this story.
Find the full list of candidates running on the Servant of the People’s list and key facts about them at www.kyivpost.com under the headline: “What we know about people Zelensky will take to next parliament”
