On Nov. 15, Odesa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov defeated his challenger, Mykola Skoryk, in a runoff vote to win another term in office.
To a certain degree, that could be construed as good news: Skoryk represents the pro-Russian Opposition Platform — For Life party. But there is strong evidence that Trukhanov has or had Russian citizenship (something he denies), and the mayor faces multiple credible allegations of corruption.
How did voters in Odesa, the Black Sea port city of 1 million people, end up with a choice between two politicians aligned with Russia, the country that has invaded and waged a bloody war on Ukraine since 2014? The answer is straightforward, but not without its nuances: Pro-Russian forces are on the offensive, using a combination of electoral politics, corruption and alliances with oligarchs to retake control of Ukraine.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the Constitutional Court, which recently issued a ruling that will erase most of Ukraine’s anti-corruption accomplishments since the EuroMaidan Revolution ousted corrupt ex-President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. It did this in tandem with pro-Russian lawmakers, remnants of the former president’s kleptocratic Party of Regions. These politicians filed complaints against Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure, which the court was happy to validate.
Unholy alliances like these aren’t restricted to the Constitutional Court.
Although President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People faction holds an unprecedented single-party majority of 246 seats in parliament, the president wields little power there. Billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky appears to have bought off many of the party’s lawmakers.
Meanwhile, the second largest faction is pro-Russian: the 44-member Opposition Platform — For Life. It manages to find ideological allies across party lines to block Ukraine’s march to the West and democracy. It’s no wonder that Western media have started to speak of Ukraine as an example of “state capture.”
The country’s corrupt, pro-Russian old guard and oligarchs are teaming up to destroy Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure. The politicians want to take the country back to the “wild 1990s” and its era of runaway graft.
The oligarchs want to demolish all obstacles to their control of the country and hope to prevent any possibility that they could face justice for impoverishing Ukraine for decades. And many of them would be happy if the nation returned to Russia’s orbit.
Last year, Zelensky won a landslide election on promises to battle corruption and imprison those responsible for impoverishing the nation. But unless he and his allies take radical action quickly, his presidency may prove to be the biggest victory that corrupt officials have seen since Yanukovych came to power. Zelensky is president, but pro-Russian forces and oligarchs increasingly look like the ones in power.
Ukrainians, victimized by corruption throughout its independent history, will not tolerate much more. When the Kremlin and rapacious oligarchs find common cause, it’s a threat to sovereignty. Unless the forces of evil are defeated, another revolution is inevitable.
Ukraine has waged three revolutions in 30 years (Granite, Orange, EuroMaidan). Nobody wants another one. But surrendering the desire to live in peace and prosperity, with democratic values, is also not an option. Something has to give. The world will soon find out what.
