It's starting to get busy at a kitschy pizza restaurant in Kyiv in the early evening, but Alex Ryabchyn is having his first meal of the day.
Ryabchyn, 31, is part of the new generation of politicians in the new parliament, and, like most of them, he is overbooked. He syays that he sleeps five hours a night, but on the whole he seems excited by the chance to be directly involved in political events, and the media buzz that comes with it.
He is now a member of Yulia Tymoshenko’s small, 19-person faction in the Verkhovna Rada, and this is a long way from where he started just a few months ago when he was still an academic in Donetsk.
Life started to change for Ryabchyn over the summer when he was cleaning out his inbox and by chance discovered an e-mail from Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party. The party was looking for young professionals to beef up their list ahead of the Oct. 26 snap election. Ryabchyn decided to give it a try, and sent in an application. He didn’t expect to be chosen, and even less to be number nine on the list.
Ryabchyn recalls being asked in for an interview and suddenly facing Tymoshenko when he walked into the office. He says he was taken off guard by her charms and that she talked to him “like a friend.”
“She spoke to me in Ukrainian and my first language at that time was English, not even Russian,” he says. He asked if it was OK to speak Russian back. “She said, if you want to become a Ukrainian politician, you should speak Ukrainian.”
Tymoshenko’s second piece of advice was “don’t worry about mistakes.”
Ryabchyn had a very attractive profile for Ukrainian parties fishing for candidates who would broaden their appeal. He is a fluent English speaker who received an master’s with distinction in innovation and sustainability for international development from the University of Sussex in England’s southeast.
There he specialized in energy efficiency, building on his experience working for the PromEconomService Corporation in Donetsk, which sought to introduce energy saving technology in eastern Ukraine. A native of Donbas, he has also been an assistant professor at the Donetsk National University since he was 22.
He also has a much stronger media background than most Ukrainian politicians, having worked first as a fixer and then freelancer for the Washington Post as events in Donbas started to heat up. Later in Kyiv he also worked for Ukraine’s Reforms Communications Taskforce, connected to the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, trying to raise media awareness of needed reforms.
Ryabchyn says that until the EuroMaidan protests he had never been political and even then was discouraged by the violent methods some protesters used.
The real change in his political nature, however, came when the Russian Senate voted to give Russian President Vladimir Putin the power to invade Ukraine.
“For me it was a shock. I am a Russian-speaking person. My mother is Russian. I have lots of Russian- speaking friends, but for me the Russian part of me died,” he says.
He says he was the active in protests in Donetsk, where people participating did not necessarily support the EuroMaidan protests but strongly believed in debate within Ukraine to solve the differences.
Ryabchyn left Donetsk in May with his wife and daughter after Russia-backed separatists tried to take control of the city’s airport. He says he expected it to be a week long break, but they are still in Kyiv.
Now when he is a lawmaker, Ryabchyn says he wants to change the government’s attitude towards the people in areas controlled by separatists.
Within Batkivshchyna he is responsible for the Donetsk Oblast as well as Vinnytsia Oblast, where many refugees have been relocated as well as Donetsk National National University.
“They are not all terrorists or responsible for the Donetsk People’s Republic. There are a lot of people who identify as Ukrainian,” he says.
His main focus, however, will be the energy committee where he received a seat. He says he will work to reduce consumption and create so-called “green-collar” jobs in the renewable and energy efficiency fields. Ukraine has lagged behind in green energy projects.
Although formally a coalition member, Ryabchyn was a vocal critic of the Ministry of Information. He criticized the lack of debate surrounding it establishment, but in the end voted for the package bill that included the appointment of ministers and the creation of the Ministry of Information.
Now that he is in the Rada, Ryabchyn also has to live with the realities of pay for deputies. Under current laws members of parliament receive Hr 5,000 ($320) a month. Ryabchyn says he doesn’t receive any financial assistance from the party but that he does hope to be able to supplement his income by continuing to write.
