Coincidence or not, Ukraine’s Russia-friendly opposition officially nominated its presidential candidate Yuriy Boyko on the same day, Jan. 29, as President Petro Poroshenko announced he would run for re-election in March.
Boyko has already been registered as a candidate with the Central Election Commission, so the Jan. 29 convention was a formality to reiterate the key messages of his Opposition Platform, which arose from the union of some members of Opposition Bloc and Za Zhittya (For Life) political parties.
In his speech, the leader of Za Zhittya, Vadim Rabinovych, declared that the opposition’s main goal is to stand against “the party of war” – a derogatory name he and his allies use for the current leadership, the ruling coalition of Petro Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front, whom they accuse of profiteering from the war with Russia and dividing Ukraine by language, faith, and place of living.
Boyko’s presidential platform mainly targets Russian-speaking voters in eastern and southern Ukraine. He also appeals to an estimated three million Ukrainians living and working in Russia, who will have to travel to Georgia, Finland, or Kazakhstan – or return to Ukraine – in order to cast their ballots at the March 31 presidential election since the Ukrainian government decided to shut down all five of its polling stations in Russia.
According to December poll by Democratic Initiatives Foundation and Razumkov Center, Boyko ranked 4th with 8.4 percent of the vote.
Boyko said opposition represents interests of all Ukrainians “regardless of what language they speak and what church they go to,” hitting out at Poroshenko’s election campaign, which is aimed at the promotion of Ukrainian language over Russian and the establishment of Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent from the Moscow church.
A former energy minister and now a lawmaker, Boyko, is a co-chair of the Opposition Bloc party, which is widely perceived as the successor of the Party of Regions, a pro-Russian political party that ceased to exist after the collapse of the regime of its leader, Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president who fled the country in 2014 after the EuroMaidan Revolution and was recently sentenced to 13 years in absentia for treason.
While Yanukovych is on the run from justice, former energy minister of his cabinet, Boyko, got cleared from prosecution over the fraud with the purchase of two drilling rigs for an inflated price of $800 million from suppliers-shell companies. The scam exposed by investigative journalists in 2011 was dubbed “Boyko Towers,” although in 2018 the Prosecutor General’s Office said it had found no evidence of Boyko’s involvement in it. Anti-corruption watchdogs suspected Boyko might have reached a secret deal with the prosecutors.
Donbas war
Leaders and adherents of Opposition Platform – Za Zhittya blame the ruling powers that be for breaking up the country.
During the Jan. 29 convention, not a single word was said about Crimea, which Kremlin illegally occupied and has controlled since 2014.
Instead, the reintegration of the Donbas, where vast territories remain under the control of Kremlin proxies, was on top of the agenda.
To end the war in the eastern Donbas and return the Russian-occupied territories to Ukraine, Boyko and his supporters advocate “the peaceful settlement of the Donbas conflict” and “direct negotiations with all sides involved.”
Currently, there are two working groups that have been trying to bring about the implementation of the 2014 Minsk peace agreements: the Normandy Four, which includes presidents and foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France, and the Trilateral Contact Group, which includes representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and OSCE. None of them have been successful, and the war has now been going on for almost five years.
The head of the political council of Za Zhittya, the Ukrainian politician and oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, suggests talks without international participants: only Kyiv, Moscow, and the leaders of the self-proclaimed administrations in the Russian-occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
Medvedchuk is believed to have close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin (Putin is said to be the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter) and was an envoy at the Trilateral Contact Group talks in Minsk. Speaking at the convention on Jan. 29, he suggested creating an autonomous region in the Donbas.
“Our plan envisions the formation of an autonomous region of the Donbas within Ukraine,” he said adding that such region would have its own parliament and governing bodies, which would ensure the vital activity of the Donbas.
Neutrality
While Poroshenko promised that Ukraine would submit its bid to become a member of the European Union in 2024 and seek membership of NATO, Boyko stands for rapprochement with Russia and non-participation in any military blocs.
He supports the revival of trade relations with traditional markets of Russia and other states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet republics). The war with Russia has ruptured Ukraine’s trade links with Central Asia, for instance.
Opposition Bloc split
However, Boyko is not the only presidential candidate from the Opposition Bloc party in the upcoming March election.
His party fellow Oleksandr Vilkul, co-chair of the 38-seat Opposition Bloc parliamentary faction, is running for president too. Vilkul’s convention and official nomination took place earlier, on Jan. 20 in Zaporizhzhya.
The new alliance Opposition Platform – Za Zhittya was not to the liking of some members of the Opposition Bloc, and in November, lawmakers Boyko and Serhiy Lyovochkin, the former head of Yanukovych’s administration, were expelled from the Opposition Bloc faction.
Ukrainian media reported that the split was caused by a struggle for power between the two main groups within the Opposition Bloc. Vilkul is backed by Ukrainian businessman and lawmaker Vadym Novynskyi and oligarch Rinat Akhmetov; while Boyko and Rabinovych align with Medvedchuk, Lyovochkin, and oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
