A long-rumored conflict between former President Petro Poroshenko and acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has gone public after the two politicians criticized one another in the media.
In an interview with the Ukrainska Pravda news site published on July 30, Poroshenko accused the police of meddling in the July 21 parliamentary election. The former president suggested that law enforcement was partly to blame for his party’s poor performance in the vote.
“Can I say that there was work against us? There was. There was police work against us. There was work against us by organized groups like (blogger Anatoliy) Shariy’s organized within the country,” Poroshenko said.
Poroshenko said that the police guarded supporters of scandalous political blogger Anatoliy Shariy when they came to his European Solidarity party’s rallies with balloons to boo him and cause provocations on July 11.
European Solidarity received just 8.1 percent of the vote, placing it fourth in the election and giving it 25 seats in the new 424-member parliament, including two elected in single-member districts. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party took first place in the election with 43.17 percent of the vote. It received 254 seats, an absolute majority.
The same day that Ukrainska Pravda published Poroshenko’s interview, Avakov responded to the former president’s accusations on Facebook, his preferred channel of public communication.
“Poroshenko shamelessly lies, justifying his defeat in the election with the notion that ‘there was police work’ against him,” Avakov wrote in a post on July 30. “The police, like the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a whole, did not work for him, but worked for fair elections, for Ukraine. Alas, for Poroshenko, lying is like breathing, and that’s why he loses.”
In his interview, Poroshenko also directed accusations against Zelensky. He said that the Shariy supporters’ actions could have been coordinated with the president’s office.
“I don’t rule out that those people who gave (the balloon idea) to Shariy were connected to Mr. Zelensky,” Poroshenko said. “Because they were guarded by the police, because they were clearly involved with the authorities.”
The Kyiv Post tried to reach Zelensky’s Presidential Office for comment.
Shariy is a political video blogger who has criticized Poroshenko and his office from abroad in Europe. In 2012, Shariy fled Ukraine to avoid criminal prosecution for shooting a gun in a restaurant. Shariy then created a party that unsuccessfully ran for parliament this month, but was declined registration as a candidate himself.
Avakov remains the interior minister, a post he also held under Poroshenko. But Avakov publicly distanced himself from Poroshenko during the presidential campaign in spring. Then, police uncovered and stopped several election violations alleged to have been in Poroshenko’s favor. Until now, Avakov and Poroshenko have not attacked each other publicly.
Zelensky has never publicly criticized Avakov, although he hasn’t held back in his criticism of many other top officials. This, combined with Zelensky’s recent remarks that some Poroshenko-era ministers might keep their jobs, has led to speculation that Avakov could stay at his post when Zelensky will appoint the new government.
