KHARKIV, SLOVIANSK, Ukraine — Before Ukrainians elected comedic actor Volodymyr Zelensky as their president, many favored rock musician Svyatoslav Vakarchuk as leader of the nation.
But the vocalist of popular rock band Okean Elzy decided to not run for president. Instead, he runs for parliament with his new political party, Voice.
Introduced just two months before the scheduled date of the snap parliamentary election on July 21, Voice is steadily climbing in the polls. It appears to have secured the 5 percent threshold to win seats in the future parliament.
With Vakarchuk at the helm, Voice is running with a pool of accomplished and mostly young — average age, 37 — professionals and activists. They are all political newcomers.
“I don’t believe in professional politicians. It’s a myth,” Vakarchuk told journalists on July 1 after a campaign rally in Sloviansk, a city of 110,000 people in Donetsk Oblast.
The rock star said his goal now is to bring new people to the parliament. In the future, he wants the party to grow strong and not depend on his name.
“We have to end this practice of a one-leader party. It is harmful when the public knows only No. 1 on the list,” Vakarchuk said.
Ukraine’s personality-driven parties often lack clear ideological principles, serving only as vehicles for the prominent politician who leads them.
Vakarchuk is not a complete newcomer to politics. He briefly served as a lawmaker in the Ukrainian parliament in 2007–2008, but resigned in disillusionment. But he is willing to give it a second try. He says he prefers a lawmaker’s mandate to the presidency because the parliament is where legal changes happen.
He says this time it will be different for him in parliament.
“It’s one thing to go into parliament as part of a team whose words don’t match their actions, to be a black sheep. It is another thing to have your own political party of like-minded people.”
Vakarchuk says he returned to politics out of a sense of obligation to the nation, even as his rock band Okean Elzy celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and plays to full stadiums across Ukraine.
“The more I meet with people, the more I become convinced I did the right thing,” he said.
Coalition with Zelensky
Voice isn’t the only new party likely to enter parliament. The other such party is President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People, which polls around 40 percent, making it the leader.
One of the biggest questions is whether the two parties will form a coalition, thereby bringing together an unprecedented number of new faces in the Ukrainian legislature.
Vakarchuk is vague about the future coalition, only saying that Voice is ready to negotiate with other parties that support Ukraine’s path to Europe.
Initially, Vakarchuk was unimpressed with the idea of Zelensky as president. During the presidential campaign, the musician called on Ukrainians to vote “not for a gag,” which many viewed as a rejection of Zelensky.
Since then, however, Vakarchuk appears to have softened. Today, he says he wants Zelensky to succeed.
“The president was elected by the people,” the singer said. “Being against the president means being against the people.”
New faces, new rules
Born into a family of university professors, Vakarchuk, 44, holds a doctorate in physics from Lviv University. He never put it to use. Instead, he focused on Okean Elzy, which he co-founded in college.
In 2015, he was selected as Yale World Fellow, a fellowship for mid-career leaders and distinguished professionals. In 2017, he spent two semesters as a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy and Rule of Law.
Vakarchuk also co-founded the Center for Economic Strategy, an independent think tank based in Kyiv, and co-sponsors the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program, which sends three outstanding Ukrainians to Stanford University every year.
Vakarchuk’s biggest project, Okean Elzy, has released nine albums and many singles over 25 years and has amassed a huge fan base among several generations of Ukrainians. The band performed in the Ukrainian language even when many Ukrainian artists opted for Russian to appeal to a larger audience.
In the winter of the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013–2014, which ended President Viktor Yanukovych’s rule, Okean Elzy performed for free on Independence Square in Kyiv.
Many lines in their songs resemble political manifestos: “I will not surrender without a fight,” “Will we have enough strength to make the wall between us fall,” “We continue to carry our flag and not a cross, we keep walking to our own Everest,” “Tired of wars and broken by no one, flourish, my land.”
These days, Okean Elzy follows its lead singer around the country on the campaign trail. Sometimes, after rallies, the band gives free concerts, which Vakarchuk insists are not part of his campaigning. During the presidential campaign, Zelensky came under criticism for doing the same thing: touring the country with free comedy shows.
Vakarchuk says he will not give up music after he becomes a lawmaker. After all, he and his party members are going to parliament for no more than two terms, or 10 years, he says. He believes this should be the rule for all parties.
Voice is also disrupting the Ukrainian political tradition by banning current and former lawmakers from its party list. Only a handful of current lawmakers stand as Voice candidates in single-member districts.
“People have this great rejection of the authorities. We decided that we can’t do new politics with old faces,” said Yulia Klymenko, former deputy minister of economy. She is second on Voice’s party list and runs the party’s campaign.
One of the newcomers is Kira Rudik, third on the party list and the chief operating officer of Ring Ukraine, an Amazon-owned tech company.
“Vakarchuk reached out to me and said we are a startup of talented people who want to change the country. It could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Let’s take it together,” Rudik told the Kyiv Post on the sidelines of Voice’s rally on June 30 in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine.
Voice is striking a gender balance that is uncommon in Ukrainian politics. The top 10 tickets are equally distributed between men and women.
Overall, there are 10 women out of the top 30 Voice candidates — more than in any other leading party.
Denying rumors he is backed by Ukrainian tycoon Victor Pinchuk, Vakarchuk said his party rejected any sponsorship from oligarchs and solely relies on public fundraising. He says this defies another practice in Ukraine, where politicians hide the identities of their real donors and conspire with oligarchs to gain access to media.
Vakarchuk says de-oligarchization of the country has to start with politicians.
“When we are talking about fighting against oligarchs, we don’t mean taking their wealth away. Only Bolsheviks and communists did that,” he clarifies. “Oligarchs are not simple businessmen. They use their wealth to influence politics. They buy media to promote politicians who help them become richer. We are talking about a level playing field. The laws have to be the same for everyone.”
Voice only accepts donations from people who don’t influence the party’s independence and who share its values. On July 3, the party announced that it had rejected some Hr 2 million ($76,700) in dubious donations.
Tour to the east
At the moment, Voice is touring eastern and central Ukraine. The east is hardly the region that will guarantee the party its victory. It polls low in regions affected by Russia’s war and is dominated by pro-Russian politicians.
On July 1, Voice and Vakarchuk went to Sloviansk, a city in Donetsk Oblast that was liberated from Russian occupation in July 2014, but now feels cut off from the rest of Ukraine.
Local billboards and campaign tents advertise two candidates: independent lawmaker Oleg Nedava, formerly with ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s party, and businessman Yuriy Solod, who runs with the Russia-friendly Opposition Platform — For Life party.
Vakarchuk, as a Ukrainian-speaking native of western Ukraine, drew a small crowd on the central square of Sloviansk on a hot Monday afternoon.
“This is the pro-Ukrainian minority. Just as many people showed up for Vyshyvanka Day,” said Iryna Plastun, a local who decided to vote for Vakarchuk because “he is patriotic, young, and educated.” Vyshyvanka Day is a celebration of the traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt.
“Why do people still vote for the Opposition Platform and (its leader Yuriy) Boyko? Because of poverty and (political) illiteracy. Most Sloviansk people have not traveled to other parts of Ukraine, let alone abroad,” she said.
Another woman, Vira Yurik — originally from Mukachevo, Vakarchuk’s hometown — happened to be in Slovyansk for her mother’s funeral. She echoes Plastun’s sentiments emotionally: “Everything to the west of Kyiv is already the Eurozone. Donbas doesn’t see it and that’s why it doesn’t want to be in the European Union.”
Vakarchuk wasn’t discouraged by the small crowd in Sloviansk.
“I don’t want to please everyone,” he says. “When I’m in Donbas, I say the same things as in Lviv, maybe in a slightly different language.”
