Ukraine’s Russia-friendly opposition, like its Russia-unfriendly nationalists, appears to have failed to unite around a single candidate to represent them at the upcoming Ukrainian presidential elections in March 2019.
The co-chairman of the Opposition Bloc faction in parliament, Oleksandr Vilkul, announced during the morning session at Verkhovna Rada on Nov. 20 that the faction had stripped its co-chairman Yuriy Boyko, and another lawmaker, Serhiy Lyovochkin of their membership in the faction.
That comes after Boyko announced he was teaming up with Vadym Rabinovych, another lawmaker from Opposition Bloc faction, to create the Opposition Platform Za Zhyttia (For Life), on Nov. 9.
The new platform announced Boyko as its candidate for the presidency in the upcoming 2019 presidential election on Nov. 17.
This didn’t go down well with the rest of the Opposition Bloc, prompting the expulsion of Boyko and Lyovochkin.
The Opposition Bloc is the successor of the Party of Regions, the former ruling party that disbanded after its leader, then-President Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine in the EuroMaidan Revolution, an anti-government uprising, in February 2014. The former Party of Regions members, including Vilkul, Boyko, and Lyovochkin, formed the Opposition Bloc – a conservative party with the base in Ukraine’s eastern regions. The party doesn’t openly declare its pro-Russian stance, but manifests it in its activities.
The split in the Opposition Bloc puts an end to a months-long speculation about a possibility of a single presidential candidate from the pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.
The split is a political separation between two main camps inside the Opposition Bloc: the group of Boyko and Lyovochkin, and the group of lawmakers backed by the richest Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, the former sponsor of Yanukovych.
It also marks Boyko’s union with Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician and a personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Medvedchuk, who for years was a standalone power center in Ukraine’s political life, joined forces with Rabinovych’s Za Zhyttia in July. Boyko joined their group three months later.
Ukrainian political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko, the head of the Penta Center for Applied Political Studies, said that the pro-Russian opposition will now have at least two candidates run for presidency in the upcoming elections, which he reckons is no bad thing.
“Opposition Bloc and Opposition Platform Za Zhyttia will compete with each other, which I think is good for the country,” Fesenko said. “The consolidation of political forces that consider themselves to be Russian-speaking and are actually associated with Russia is a potential threat to splitting the country, as evidenced by the events of the last 10-15 years.”
Fesenko said it was not yet clear who might be the candidate for the presidency from the Opposition Bloc, as with Boyko’s departure from the faction, the issue had been thrown open.
Meanwhile, Boyko only has an outside chance of taking the presidency in March: according to a joint poll by several Ukrainian pollsters conducted in October-November, Boyko would win 5.5 percent of the national vote if the presidential elections were held now. Rabinovych, who said earlier in November he wouldn’t run, polled at 2.3 percent.
Ex-Prime Minister, head of the Batkivshchyna Party Yulia Tymoshenko led the poll with a support of 12.7 percent. Over 21 percent of the responders said they hadn’t picked their candidate yet, and 15 percent said they wouldn’t vote.
