The audience was waiting with anticipation for their favorite songs in Kyiv’s Opera theater on Jan. 21, when Ukraine rockstar Svyatoslav Vakarchuk and his Okean Elzy band gave a special charity show.
But many were also expecting to hear some big news from Vakarchuk himself – the announcement that he would run for president in the upcoming election on March 31.
They were disappointed. Opening the show, the pop singer praised Ukraine’s soldiers and mocked the current presidential candidates, “who are hanging billboards all over Ukraine.” But he didn’t say a word about running for president.
Instead, he said with this concert he wanted to distract people from their personal problems and “the psychosis which has caught up the whole country, which is observing the elections like a reality show.”
Then he performed for about two hours, playing his old and new hits and several folk songs. Many in the audience stood up and danced during the performance.
The money collected for the concert, performed together with Virtuosos of Kyiv orchestra, is to be donated to the families of the Ukrainian soldiers killed in action in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The ticket prices ranged from $35 to $1,000. The 1,680-seater hall was full.
Vakarchuk told the audience at the beginning of the show that they had raised more than Hr 4 million, or almost $143,000. The money will be donated to Narodny Tyl, one of the largest volunteer organizations helping Ukrainian soldiers.
Vakarchuk held a similar show in a church in Vilnius, Lithuania in December, donating the money raised to children in the war zone in eastern Ukraine. Vakarchuk said he then had the idea of holding a charity concert in Kyiv.
While one of the country’s best-known pop stars, Vakarchuk, 43, is no stranger to politics. He was elected to parliament in 2007 for the Nasha Ukraina party of then-president Viktor Yushchenko. But he left Verkhovna Rada just a year later, saying he was disillusioned with the parliament.
“The political life of the country has been limited to a ruthless fight for power,” he said at the time. “The only way for me to remain myself is to leave.”
Nevertheless, Vakarchuk remained politically active, supporting the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013-2014.
Vakarchuk is also active in a range of social projects. In 2009 he founded the People of the Future foundation, aimed at promoting educational projects.
In 2017, he spent several months at Stanford University as a visiting scholar.
In October he claimed he “would not stand aside” from the processes developing in the country and would be ready to sacrifice his creative work in order to make changes. Many saw that as a hint that he might run for the presidency.
But even if he had harbored presidential ambitions, Vakarchuk may have already missed his chance, as his once impressive popularity rating has plunged over the last year.
In a poll published in late December by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), Vakarchuk gained just 2.7 percent support, while in September the same agency said he had 8.4 percent support. In October-November 2017, his rating was more than 12 percent, according to a joint poll by KIIS, Sotsys, Rating and the Razumkov Center.
It is not known who commissioned the polls about Vakarchuk’s presidential rating. Some speculate that an oligarch was backing the rock star.
Vakarchuk is a frequent guest at Yalta European Strategy annual conference organized by oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. They both also participate in supervisory board of Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Charity Fund. But asked whether he was backing a possible bid by Vakarchuk for the presidency, Pinchuk called such rumors “nonsense.”
Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said that if Vakarchuk runs now he wouldn’t be a favorite to win. He, however, has a good chance of getting into parliament at the elections in October, although he is still yet to create a party.
And at the end of the concert, Vakarchuk hinted again that the Ukrainian political scene might not have heard the last from him.
“Everything is just beginning,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”
