The presidential election campaign in Ukraine has been clouded by allegations of vote-buying, fears of Russian interference, threats, raids, investigations, and corruption scandals.
Now fears of violence on Election Day has been added to the list after a far-right organization, registered as election observers, clashed with police at protests targeting President Petro Poroshenko just weeks before the March 31 election.
Even more worrying, the campaign appears to have made rivals of the state’s various law enforcement agencies. They have been accused of acting against, or in the interests of, certain candidates.
Ultranationalists
Over the past few weeks, ultranationalists have held a number of protests demanding the trial of suspects in a large-scale embezzlement scheme in the Ukrainian defense sector uncovered by journalists of Nashi Groshi investigative outlet in late February. The scheme allegedly involved the son of a top ally of Poroshenko — the now-sacked deputy secretary of the National Defense and Security Council, Oleh Hladkovskiy.
The journalistic investigation infuriated many in Ukraine, but especially members of National Corps, a political movement born from the Azov Regiment, a military unit with links to the far-right and neo-Nazis, created to fight against Russia in the Donbas.
On March 9, National Corps party and its vigilante unit, National Militia, rallied in central Kyiv, demanding prosecution of Hladkovskiy’s son and his cronies.
The rally ended in a dramatic skirmish in front of the Presidential Administration as the protesters tried to force their way through a police cordon. Young men wearing balaclavas and medical masks shoved and violently kicked police officers and struck them on heads and faces. Both sides sprayed tear gas at each other.
After that, the ultranationalists rolled out an ultimatum to Poroshenko.
“We give Poroshenko a week to use the last effective law in Ukraine: Take a phone and tell his lackeys — judges and prosecutors — to get their act together and arrest those scumbags,” National Corps leaders said on March 11.
They promised to hold mass protests every week until their demands for justice are met.
National Corps leader Andriy Biletskiy, the founder of Azov, blamed the clashes of March 9 on the “failure of the Presidential Administration to talk with the protesters.” As the ultranationalists protested, Poroshenko was almost 200 kilometers away, speaking to voters in Cherkasy, a city of 280,000 people in central Ukraine.
The ultranationalists found him there, too.
Members of National Corps branch in Cherkasy Oblast burst into the rally. As they fought with police, Poroshenko stopped his speech and hastily drove away in his motorcade. The National Police reported 22 officers were injured. Two members of National Corps, Dmytro Kukharchuk and Anton Bratko, remain in custody.
“Nothing would have happened in Cherkasy had someone from the Presidential Administration come out to us and listened to our demands,” Biletskiy said.
Two days later, on March 11, the ultranationalists showed up at a Poroshenko campaign event in Zhytomyr, chanting “shame” as the president talked about his achievements and promises for a second term.
The Bloc of Petro Poroshenko — with 135 seats in parliament — condemned the attacks, saying they were orchestrated by “pro-Russian revanchists and fugitive oligarchs.”
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who is in charge of the National Police and connected to National Corps through the Azov Regiment, which is under the ministry’s control, hurried to denounce the violence. He said that the ultranationalists had crossed the line.
“Even if you are right and go out with anti-corruption slogans, you can’t talk about one crime while committing another,” he said in a television interview following the events in Cherkasy.
Read more: Defense corruption charges strike close to Poroshenko
Election observers
The incidents have raised fears over possible violence on Election Day, as National Militia has been authorized as a civic organization to monitor the election process. Moreover, its leaders threatened to use force if necessary to prevent voting fraud.
“By law, any Ukrainian citizen who witnesses wrongdoing must act against it and notify law enforcement” said Ihor Vdovin, a spokesman for National Militia.
Avakov promised that neither National Corps nor National Militia would have the right to use force during the voting process.
“We’re convinced that they won’t come into direct conflict with the authorities,” he said at a press briefing on March 12. “The authorities have enough resources to ensure the process goes smoothly.”
He added that over 134,000 police officers would protect public order on the day of the election on March 31.
Human rights organizations expressed concerns over the fact that a paramilitary formation with a record of intolerance and violence and linked to a “nationalist hate group”—as the U. S. Department of State branded National Corps in its March 13 report on human rights in Ukraine—would be monitoring the election process. In the past, its members have taken videos of themselves destroying a Roma camp, disrupted LGBT events, and thrown green antiseptic into the face of a Russia-friendly opposition presidential candidate.
“Ukraine clearly needs to rethink its rules on who can serve as an official election observer,” wrote Matthew Schaaf, project director at Freedom House Ukraine. “By serving as election observers or helping the police to protect ‘Ukrainian order,’ these groups could be attempting to normalize both their ideology and their use of violence.”
Olga Aivazovska, director of OPORA Network, an election watchdog, said that “any kind of election has to be protected from interference by persons or organizations that propagate or use violence.”
But revoking election observer accreditation from National Militia is impossible at this point, as Ukrainian legislation doesn’t have a procedure for it, said Tetiana Slipachuk, head of the Central Election Commission, which registered the ultranationalist organization in the first place.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko (L), head of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Hrytsak (R) and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov (C) promise mutual cooperation to ensure a free and fair election during a press briefing on March 12, 2019, in Kyiv. Behind the scenes, however, Lutsenko and Hrytsak appear to be working in the interests of Poroshenko while Avakov is believed to favor Tymoshenko. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Avakov vs. Poroshenko
With Ukraine’s SBU security service under the patronage of Poroshenko and the police under the control of Avakov, who appears to favor Batkivshchyna leader and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the lines for conflict between law enforcement agencies have been drawn.
The embezzlement scheme uncovered by Nashi Groshi wasn’t the first of its kind in Ukraine’s secretive defense budget. It followed a well-known pattern: Worn-out or low-quality military parts and equipment smuggled from Russia or Europe were resold to the Ukrainian army at an inflated cost.
But by erupting during the election campaign, this particular scandal dealt a heavy blow to Poroshenko’s support rating. In the most recent poll by the Rating group from March 11, he slid to third place behind his main opponent, Tymoshenko.
Poroshenko and Tymoshenko are competing for a place in the runoff election against actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who leads in the polls by a large margin. The two have accused each other of vote-buying.
Zenon Zawada, a political analyst with the Kyiv-based investment company Concorde Capital, claims that the violent protests of ultranationalists are being used by Avakov, who is working in the interests of Tymoshenko in this election campaign, to attack the president.
“The protests had to be violent in order to draw the attention of the mass media and the public,” Zawada wrote in an analytical note on March 11. “Indeed the Tymoshenko campaign has worked hard to keep the Russian military parts scandal in the focus of public discussion, staging various media events and protest events to keep it in the news cycle,” he said.
Avakov is one of the leaders of the People’s Front, the second biggest party in parliament. In a March 12 television interview, he said that during this election his ministry and the National Police were not backing any presidential candidate.
Avakov is often called a patron of National Corps leader Biletskiy. Under Avakov, the Azov Regiment, founded by Biletskiy, was integrated into the National Guard to fight in the Donbas in 2014. But Biletskiy denies that the minister has any influence on him or his political party, National Corps.
Vyacheslav Likhachev, a Kyiv-based researcher on far-right groups in Ukraine and Russia, doesn’t think that Avakov directly controls Biletskiy but suggests that there is an alliance between the two for the upcoming parliamentary election.
“It is obvious that in Kyiv and Cherkasy National Militia acted with the acquiescence of the police,” Likhachev said. “Avakov is openly working against the president, and this aligns with Tymoshenko’s campaign strategy to ride the wave of the corruption scandal.”
The confrontation reached the point when law enforcement agencies began firing salvos of accusations.
Avakov opened a criminal probe into vote-buying by Poroshenko’s campaign office in Kyiv Oblast. The police also uncovered a wiretapping device near the campaign office of Zelenskiy; the SBU security service retorted by saying it had been running a special operation that had nothing to do with the leading candidate.
The SBU, which is controlled by the president, raided Tymoshenko’s campaign office in Kyiv in February on the pretext of investigating a vote-buying network. Its agents also arrested a former adviser to Avakov in a bribery case.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, openly loyal to Poroshenko, also announced that his office was investigating a bribery case against a Batkivshchyna lawmaker who allegedly tried to pay presidential candidate Yuriy Tymoshenko to withdraw from the race.
In public, however, the warring agencies still present a united front: At a press briefing on March 12, Lutsenko, SBU head Vasyl Hrytsak, and Avakov sat side-by-side, vowing mutual cooperation in the interests of holding fair elections.
