Ukraine’s far-right camp has failed to unite around a single presidential candidate, with the National Corps refusing to join older nationalist organizations in endorsing Ruslan Koshulynskyi as the far-right’s candidate in the upcoming presidential election on March 31.
And against expectations, National Corps leader Andriy Biletskiy said he has decided not to run for president. The group, an offshoot of the Azov Regiment, a military unit also formed by Biletskiy, will prioritize the parliamentary elections, instead.
Supporting role
Koshulynskyi, 50, is a soft-spoken, amiable man who stood out in his crisp white shirt and blue suit from the crowd of attendees at the Svoboda party convention on Jan. 22, with most of the people around him wearing traditional Ukrainian shirts, vyshyvankas, and combat fatigues.
At the convention, Koshulynskyi was declared to be the presidential candidate of the united nationalist forces, endorsed by most far-right organizations.
He was described by convention-goers as “a kind, compassionate person and a devoted nationalist,” who has proved himself over time and who has experience in politics and war.
Koshulynskyi has been a member of Svoboda, one of the oldest nationalist parties in Ukraine, for over two decades, almost half of the time as a deputy to party leader Oleh Tyahnybok.
From 2012 to 2014, Koshulynskyi served as the deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament. At the height of the EuroMaidan protests in February 2014, he led the historic parliamentary session at which Ukrainian lawmakers by a majority vote removed then-President Viktor Yanukovych from office. Then-speaker Oleksandr Turchynov was named as interim president.
But in October 2014, Svoboda failed to win any seats in the snap parliamentary election. However, seven members of Svoboda got elected in single-member districts and formed an interfactional group led by MP Andriy Illenko.
Koshulynskyi enlisted in the artillery with the Ukrainian Army to fight Russia-led forces in the Donbas.
On his return from the frontline, he ran for mayor of his native city of Lviv in 2015 but came second after the sitting Mayor Andriy Sadovyi, who is also running for the presidency this year.
In Ukrainian politics, where personalities prevail over political platforms, Koshulynskyi’s being in supporting or runner-up roles could be his biggest weakness. He is still overshadowed by Svoboda leader Tyahnybok, who remains the poster boy for the post-Maidan Ukrainian far-right, along with the former leader of the Right Sector Dmytro Yarosh or Andriy Biletskiy of the National Corps.
This was particularly noticeable during the Jan. 22 Svoboda convention, where Koshulynskyi was officially nominated but Tyahnybok did most of the talking and answering of journalists’ questions.
An established and prominent politician, Tyahnybok was predicted to run for the presidency in 2019. However, he withdrew in favor of his deputy Koshulynskyi.
“When different political parties unite, they don’t pick their chairman among the party leaders, so that one particular party doesn’t dominate in the movement,” Tyahnybok said on Jan. 22.
“Koshulynskyi is the most acceptable candidate who can consolidate nationalist forces,” Tyahnybok added.
No unity
The parties that endorsed Koshulynskyi as their single presidential candidate are Svoboda (Freedom), Right Sector, C14, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Ukrainian Nationalists’ Congress, and DIYA, a new movement created by the former leader of the Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh.
Svoboda’s combatant formation, the Legion of Freedom, and the paramilitary organizations Karpatska Sich and Sokil – a youth paramilitary group affiliated with Svoboda – also endorsed Koshulynskyi.
This is the closest Ukraine’s nationalists have come close to uniting in almost a century. The last time it happened was in 1929, resulting in the birth of the OUN. The head of the modern-day OUN Bohdan Chervak saw the declaration of a joint presidential candidate as a good sign.
“There were two reasons pushing us to unite,” Chervak told the Kyiv Post. “Firstly, the consolidation of the nation in the face of Russian aggression. Secondly, the establishment of OUN 90 years ago, which became a milestone in the fight for national liberation. In some sense, there’s a parallel with what’s happening now.”
Oleksiy Haran, a professor of political science at Kyiv-Mohyla University and research director at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, said that the alliance won’t bring the nationalists more votes, but that it does have some symbolic significance, and could help the nationalists’ in the parliamentary elections this October.
“Koshulynskyi has no chance of getting to the runoff election, so everything is being done for the sake of the parliamentary election,” Haran said.
Chervak, too, expressed hopes that the united nationalist forces would run for the parliament and form a nationalist faction in the next parliament.
Far-right presidential candidates have never done well in Ukraine. In 2014, Tyahnybok of Svoboda won 1.16 percent of the vote, while Dmytro Yarosh, then leader of the Right Sector, won 0.7 percent.
Koshulynskyi, polling at less than 1 percent according to a December 2018 poll by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, seems unlikely to do any better.
Additionally, he will probably lose the votes of members of the National Corps, which didn’t back his candidacy.
Clash of views
National Corps leader Biletskiy, 39, announced on Jan. 25 he would not participate in the presidential election in March, calling it an “oligarchic farce.” He indirectly called on his supporters to boycott the presidential vote.
“Why vote if there is no one to vote for? It will be the election of the minority,” he said at his party convention on Jan. 25. “I think the majority of the National Corps supporters, the same as the majority of Ukrainians, will not go to the polling stations.”
Biletskiy, currently an independent lawmaker, said that his party would instead try to win seats in the Ukrainian parliament.
It remains to be seen if the disagreement over the joint presidential candidate will expose more divisions in the nationalist camp.
When Koshulynskyi was first proposed as a single presidential candidate for Ukrainian nationalists in November, Biletskiy objected, claiming the decision had been made “behind the scenes, without wide discussion and in contravention of the manifesto of the nationalist forces.”
The three major far-right organizations – Svoboda, Right Sector, and National Corps – signed the manifesto in March 2017.
While Biletskiy and Right Sector leader Andriy Tarasenko both say the 2017 nationalist manifesto remains in force, the wedge between National Corps and the rest of nationalist forces, led by Svoboda, could also be driven by differences in ideology and a generational gap.
At the heart of the united nationalist forces are veteran movements that have roots in pre-World War II times, and were revived in the 1990s. But the National Corps is the most recent arrival to the political stage, established in 2016 on the basis of the Azov Battalion. It attracts mainly much younger members, attracting young people through a variety of sports clubs and tournaments, volunteering projects and military-patriotic camps for kids
Svoboda, meanwhile, targets Ukraine’s middle-class. Koshulynskyi’s presidential election program includes such points as the opening of KGB archives, traditional family values, a ban on the privatization of profitable state enterprises, the nationalization of private monopolies, and even a lie detector test as a compulsory stage in the hiring process for public officials.
Video by Irynka Hromotska. The video was produced as a part of the Journalist Exchange Program by Media Development Foundation with the support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Content is independent of the donor.
