Ukrainian presidents have a habit of creating problems for themselves — and then having to work hard to solve them.
Take former President Viktor Yushchenko, who was triumphantly elected after the 2004 Orange Revolution. He was the victim of his own good nature. He made a major mistake on the very first day of his tenure when he nominated Yulia Tymoshenko for prime minister. This way, Yushchenko carried out a secret agreement he made with her before the election.
Also, he announced his intention to appoint Tymoshenko right before boarding a flight to Moscow, trying to send a message that, for the first time in many years, the head of the Ukrainian government was not selected by the Kremlin.
But, escaping from one problem, he created another — he unleashed his future main political rival.
President Volodymyr Zelensky may also have created his main rival in power when, in 2018, he offered a little-known political technologist, Dmytro Razumkov, to become the face of his election campaign. Then Zelensky called him to lead the party and become the Verkhovna Rada chairman.
Now, a year after taking office, Razumkov is playing his own game completely, often sabotaging Zelensky’s initiatives and building personal relations with the oligarchs, aiming to continue his political career after Zelensky’s term ends. At the heart of Razumkov’s line of conduct is to avoid any conflicts.
When Andriy Bohdan headed the presidential administration, he told me that the president’s office considers Razumkov an obstacle to rapid transformations.
The first sign that Zelensky and Razumkov have been at loggerheads appeared this fall during Razumkov’s interview on Ukraina 24, which belongs to Ukraine’s richest oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. While answering the pro-Russian TV host’s question on whether Razumkov considered himself a member of the president’s team, he replied: “I consider myself a member of the team.”
“You didn’t say ‘president’s team,’” the host added, to which Razumkov responded: “Well, there are a lot of people on the team.”
Zelensky didn’t miss the opportunity to show the public that he no longer considers Razumkov a close ally. So, when Zelensky was in self-isolation due to COVID‑19, he recorded a video with other top officials who were also sick and isolating. He included the first deputy speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, but not Razumkov.
Earlier, Servant of the People refused to support Razumkov’s brother-in-law in the mayoral race in Mykolaiv. In the end, he had to run on the pro-Russian Opposition Plat-form — For Life party ticket and lost.
The confrontation became public when, in late October, the Constitutional Court ruled to cancel penalties for lying in officials’ asset declarations, an effective mechanism for monitoring their way of life.
Contrary to the decision of the Security Council headed by the president, Razumkov set up a working group in parliament to freeze the crisis, which included people that started the crisis — lawmakers from the Opposition Platform — For Life party. It fits into Razumkov’s strategy of not entering into conflict with anyone.
The bill that Razumkov’s group proposed was useless: It didn’t restrain the judges of the Constitutional Court at all. In the end, the situation with the Constitutional Court came to a standstill largely due to Razumkov’s efforts.
Vitrenko vote
Currently, Razumkov has assembled a group of lawmakers from the Servant of the People party, which includes several influential heads of committees, and is trying to create a separate channel of communication with all players in parliament.
While at the beginning Razumkov’s initiatives remained low-key, now he is openly sabotaging suggestions of the President’s Office. This was the case with Zelensky’s attempt to appoint Yuriy Vitrenko as energy minister and first deputy energy minister. Razumkov didn’t support this decision, neither did the group of lawmakers close to him. In the end, the Cabinet appointed Vitrenko acting energy minister.
Interestingly, Razumkov’s and Vitrenko’s parents — Oleksandr Razumkov and Natalia Vitrenko — were close friends despite being ideological opponents. Their children aren’t ideological opponents, and share similar values — but they are competing for the status of a new leader.
Razumkov quite naturally knocked Vitrenko down during the parliamentary vote for his appointment, realizing that Vitrenko threatens his standing as the only alternative cen-ter of influence. Vitrenko, once in power, is likely to become a point of consolidation for groups within the Servant of the People party because of his leadership qualities.
Consciously or not, Razumkov, who often appears on Akhmetov’s TV channels, played along with the oligarch in the game against Vitrenko. Akhmetov opposes Vitrenko, realizing that he will not tolerate the status quo when all the energy sector was subordinate to Akhmetov’s interests. And, by the way, this made Vitrenko a preferred candidate for other oligarchs who were dissatisfied with such a skew in favor of the King of the Donbas.
Another group in Servant of the People that opposed Vitrenko’s appointment is a group linked to businessman Ilya Pavlyuk. He is not a lawmaker, but he helped his nephew and 20 other people get into the Verkhovna Rada in single-member districts. They have repeatedly played along with Akhmetov, in particular, when they voted on the law that established a low rent rate for iron ore.
Zelensky perceived it as a personal insult when just over half of his party faction voted for Vitrenko’s appointment. He is said to have been furious after the vote and blamed the outcome on Razumkov.
Young old guard
I think that the reason for this standoff is that, initially, Zelensky misread Razumkov.
Zelensky ran in the 2019 presidential election as a candidate from outside the system, declaring his intention to bring new people to power. But Razumkov is not “outside-the-system.” He is a part of the system, and he is very thirsty for power. He never missed an opportunity to come into power: Razumkov was a member of the youth wing of Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and worked for Serhiy Tigipko’s presidential campaign.
The speaker’s post is not only a dream come to life, but also a starting point. Razumkov behaves like an old-guard politician, contrary to Zelensky’s idea of rebooting the power institutes. And instead of a partner in this effort, Zelensky got a competitor.
Razumkov is to Zelensky what Tymoshenko was to Yushchenko.
This does not mean that Zelensky himself doesn’t make mistakes. One of them was not firing his deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov after it was revealed that he was being investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. That cost Zelensky the support of anti-corruption activists who sided with him in the standoff with the Constitutional Court.
This also doesn’t justify the loyalty that the administration demonstrated towards Akhmetov in 2020, hurting Ukraine’s energy sector.
The paradox is that, for political survival, Zelensky now needs to restrain a person he himself brought to power. And for this, he needs to bring in new leaders so that they can compete with each other, and the president can act as an arbiter.
Unfortunately, this is politics as we’ve always known it in Ukraine.
Sergii Leshchenko is a Kyiv Post columnist, investigative journalist, and former member of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.
