The closer it gets to the March 31 presidential election, the more scandals and dirty tricks come into play.
With actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy leading the race, President Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko are competing for second place and a chance in the April 21 runoff. And their teams are openly warring with each other.
On March 12, Artur Gerasymov, the head of Poroshenko’s faction in parliament, speaking from the parliament’s rostrum, played from his phone a taped phone conversation, where a woman with a voice like that of Tymoshenko warmly congratulates on his birthday a man with a voice resembling that of billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.
The intercepted conversation was published on March 7 by British news service Liveleak, and since then it has been widely shared, mostly by Poroshenko’s supporters, on YouTube and on social media.
“I want to thank you on your birthday for all, for the fact that you can be a real friend, a real partner in all of the most important issues,” the woman is heard saying on the tape. “I want to tell you that I very much appreciate this.”
The woman also said she hoped that “all bad things stay in the past, in the last year.”
“Keep your spirits up. I know you’re having not an easy time,” she also said.
“We will not stop until we reach our goals,” answered the man, with the voice and tone similar to that of Kolomoisky.
Kolomoisky, who now lives in Israel, celebrated his birthday on Feb. 13.
He fiercely criticizes Poroshenko and is battling Ukraine’s government in court over his former bank PrivatBank, which the government nationalized in December 2016 to save it from collapse. Privatbank now sues Kolomoisky and his business partner Hennadiy Boholyubov for allegedly siphoning billions of dollars from the bank before the nationalization. Kolomoisky, in his turn, is suing to challenge the nationalization of his bank.
After playing the phone call in parliament, Gerasymov said Kolomoisky now sponsors the campaigns both of Tymoshenko and of Zelenskiy. Kolomoisky’s 1+1 television channel airs Zelenskiy’s comedy shows, but both have claimed they have only business connections.
Tymoshenko’s spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the tape.
When Gerasymov was playing the alleged intercepted conversation, Oleksandr Abdullin, a lawmaker of Tymoshenko’s party and also a political technologist of her campaign, jumped up to him and called him an “idiot.”
Petro Poroshenko Bloc’s MP Artur Gerasymov plays an audio of an alleged intercepted phone call between MP and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko and self-exiled oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky in parliament on March 12. (RFE/RL)
“Artur, you are an idiot, just an idiot!” Abdullin said in the microphone in front of Gerasymov. “Think what you are now delivering to the whole country.”
Kolomoisky in an interview with journalist Dmytro Gordon in December called Tymoshenko his “favorite” in the presidential race and said he supports any candidate who beats Poroshenko in the first round.
Kolomoisky hadn’t been a fan of Tymoshenko in the past. In 2015, he called her a “prostitute” for staying in the pro-government coalition in parliament while at the same time being in opposition to President Poroshenko.
Kolomoisky, who is known for his blunt remarks, has had his phone conversations tapped and leaked several times in the past.
In 2015, he allegedly threatened Andriy Kobolyev, the CEO of state-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz of Ukraine, to send an armed man from the war zone to capture a power plant and Ukrtransgaz, the operator of the Ukrainian gas transport system. None of the two ever confirmed the conversation was real.
“Don’t f*ck with us,” said a man with a voice resembling that of Kolomoisky in an audio recording of the alleged threats.
