Ukraine is facing a political storm that could hit right after the Oct. 25 local elections. As a result of it, President Volodymyr Zelensky may lose the mono-majority in parliament, and oligarchs will get direct access to positions in power.
Meet Ihor Palytsya, a lawmaker and businessman. He is at the heart of this plot. In Ukrainian, his last name means a stick used to hit someone. Palytsya can become a hitting stick in the hands of his close ally, billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.
Palytsya leads a 24-member faction of For The Future (Za Maibutne) party in parliament. The party is a champion by the number of campaign ads ahead of the local elections. For several months, Palytsya has been showing up to every broadcasting of the Pravo na Vladu (Right to Power), the flagship talk show on Kolomoisky’s 1+1 TV channel, one of the most popular political shows in the country.
Through Palytsya and his party, Kolomoisky is going to impose his political scenario on Zelensky. His goal is to make the government hostage to his needs and fears.
Palytsya is a long-term partner of Kolomoisky. The history of their relationship dates back more than 20 years. As Kolomoisky himself admitted in a London court and the Ukrainian parliament, in 2003 he succeeded in appointing Palytsya the head of Ukrnafta, the state-owned producer of oil and gas. In return, Kolomoisky and his partner Gennadiy Boholyubov paid ex-President Leonid Kuchma’s family half of Ukrnafta’s profits.
He was also transferring $5 million a month to a “special fund” that Kolomoisky claimed had been formed to fund Kuchma’s election campaign for his third term, for which he never ran. Instead, Kuchma bowed out after ruling from 1994 to 2005. According to Kolomoisky, he paid some $100 million to this fund, which means that the oligarch earned much more from the scheme.
In parliament, Palytsya’s group For the Future lobbies for the oligarch. In parliament, Palytsya shares an office with Oleksandr Dubinsky, who is a member of the Servant of the People party but is also affiliated with Kolomoisky. Dubinsky was recently exposed for allegedly spreading fake news about the EuroMaidan Revolution at the behest of allies of President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted as president by the uprising on Feb. 22, 2014.
Palytsya and Kolomoisky are trying to break Zelensky’s mono-majority and then make him enter a coalition with the For the Future faction.
Earlier, Kolomoisky’s influence on the 246-member Servant of the People faction was limited to 25–30 lawmakers, but this summer the oligarch allegedly “convinced” another 15. Now the total size of Kolomoisky’s group within the president’s party is estimated at 40–45 lawmakers. This means that when discipline in the ruling party is poor — which is often the case — the oligarch can disrupt a vote through his own “servants of the people.”
Before, if Kolomoisky’s lawmakers within the Servant of the People refused to vote for something, the deficit of votes was covered by the Dovira, a 20-member agrarian lobby group in parliament. But now they will not be enough to compensate for the saboteurs.
Particularly interesting was the vote in September for amendments to the Tax Code on state support of culture, tourism and creative industries. The Servant of the People faction gave only 188 of the necessary 225 votes, although this law was promoted by Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko, who has authority in the faction and previously worked for Kolomoisky. No exceptions were made even for him.
Kolomoisky’s blackmail is aimed at gaining as much influence in the parliament as possible, through those lawmakers who have already gathered in the group For the Future and those lawmakers whom he controls within the Servants of the People. Together, it’s close to 70 lawmakers. In the future, they might openly unite.
“After the local elections, lawmakers from the Servant of the People who were elected in single-member districts will move to the For the Future faction,” says Yaroslav Zheleznyak of the Voice faction who works with Dubinsky in one committee. “After this, it will become the largest faction in parliament after the Servant of the People and will have 60 lawmakers.”
Kolomoisky wants to impose a deadly offer on Zelensky — a coalition of Servant of the People and For the Future. This will mean more than losing the majority and the decision-making power. This will mean that in the future, Kolomoisky will be able to threaten the president with the collapse of the coalition at any time, which may potentially lead to snap parliamentary elections.
It is clear that in the case of an early election, the Servant of the People won’t be able to get enough votes to form a single-party coalition, and Zelensky will be forced to ally with real political predators — either Kolomoisky, Viktor Medvedchuk, Yulia Tymoshenko, or all of them at once. This will mean curtailing reforms and abandoning the European course, and a fiasco of Zelensky as a leader.
But the option of forming a coalition with the For the Future faction without early elections is also dangerous. Backstage, the oligarch already named his main condition: a post for Palytsya. And if a month ago they talked about the post of the minister of economy, now the demand is to make him prime minister. Plus, they want 25 percent of Cabinet positions.
Kolomoisky’s minion Dubinsky has already announced on TV channel Nash that they seek to eliminate Prime Minister Denys Shmygal by forming a coalition. “We are on the verge of a public administration crisis,” Dubinsky claimed. “If there are no 226 votes from the Servant of the People then we must either enter into a coalition with other parties, or tolerate this nobody (Shmyhal).”
Kolomoisky’s main goal is clear — to control the government in order to get the PrivatBank case against him in a London court closed. The state bank, controlled by the government, is suing its former owners Kolomoisky and Bogoliubov for $5.5 billion that they allegedly stole from it.
Kolomoisky fears the London case the most. In case of defeat he could lose $5.5 billion and go to jail for lying under oath.
Such blackmail became possible because of the ruling party’s last year’s mistakes.
In the 2019 elections, the Servant of the People, then at the peak of its popularity, simply allowed Palytsya to win his seat — they nominated an unknown doctor to run against him in the single-district constituency.
Palytsya’s plans are pretty clear. In an interview with the party newspaper, he said that he wants early elections to the Verkhovna Rada in the near future. The goal is to destroy the mono-majority, which does not allow oligarchic factions to directly influence the government and legislation. Plus, the election will bring complete disorganization in the coming months until March, which will create opportunities to close the case at the High Court in London.
Palytsya also says his party is interested in the maximum weakening of the president’s power. In an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, he said he wanted to turn Ukraine into a parliamentary republic and leave the president with the powers similar to his German or Swiss counterpart.
It is in the interests of any oligarch to weaken the institution of the president to ceremonial powers, and then make decisions that are beneficial to the oligarchs through parliament, where it will be much easier for them to negotiate by setting up their pocket parties.
In case of possible early parliamentary elections, Kolomoisky’s main ally is the Opposition Platform For Life, led by Vladimir Putin’s friend Medvedchuk, who is also a longtime supporter of the parliamentary model.
Kolomoisky’s enmity with Medvedchuk is long gone. Now Kolomoisky’s and Medvedchuk’s TV channels promote the same fake conspiracies about the foreign control of Ukraine, George Soros, and secret U.S. laboratories in Ukraine.
Another ally is Tymoshenko, who is equally close to Kolomoisky and Medvedchuk, and who has already announced that her Batkivshchyna party won’t be partnering with Servant of the People when forming coalitions in local councils after the Oct. 25 elections.
Tymoshenko also said that she wants to form a political coalition of local councils to advocate to repeal the laws passed by Zelensky’s party in parliament. In particular, Tymoshenko is interested in canceling two key laws: the land market and the legalization of the gambling business.
In other words, the vengeful comeback planned by Tymoshenko, Medvedchuk and Kolomoisky is not a fantasy. This is the game they will play in the coming months. And they are grandmasters in creating political conspiracies and crushing reforms. If they succeed, the current troubles in the mono-majority would seem like a child’s play.
Sergii Leshchenko is a Kyiv Post columnist, investigative journalist, and former member of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.
