Just 10 days before the election run-off on April 21, the presidential campaign is getting dirtier and dirtier.
On April 11, social media users started sharing a video ad in which a truck hits presidential candidate political satirist Volodymyr Zelenskiy as he walks the street along with his supporters.
The ad then shows a line of cocaine being sniffed up a banknote tube, with the words “Everyone has his own line” – hinting at allegations that Zelenskiy takes drugs.
The ad, which uses footage from one of Zelenskiy’s own campaign advertisements, shocked many.
Zelenskiy’s team said his competitor in the second round President Petro Poroshenko was responsible for the ad, and that Zelenskiy would now have to reinforce his security.
“It’s unclear for us whether Petro Oleksiyovych (Poroshenko) enjoys watching a truck knocking Zelenskiy down, or if he enjoys watching the white line that appears after,” Zelenskiy’s team said on his official Facebook page on April 11.
A video ad in which a truck hits presidential candidate political satirist Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
This ad was first shown on Poroshenko’s Telegram channel but was later removed.
The police opened a criminal probe on the video on the threat to a public figure.
Meanwhile, several Facebook users posted pictures of negative ads about Zelenskiy that they had found placed near their homes, in which Zelenskiy is portrayed as a drug addict.
“Don’t kick out a drug addict from your entranceway, he might be you new preZEdent,” one of them reads, using the ZE abbreviation from Zelenskiy’s election campaign. Another ad had a photo of Zelenskiy with claims that his drug tests were fake, and that he is a danger to children.
An ad with a photo of Volodymyr Zelenskiy with claims that his drug tests were fake. (Facebook)
Zelenskiy on April 3 proposed that he and Poroshenko take drugs and alcohol tests to end speculation about his alleged his abuse of drugs and allegations that Poroshenko has a drink problem.
They both took the tests on April 5, though they were conducted in different clinics and both questioned the “clean” results claimed by each other.
On April 10, Poroshenko once again gave samples for drug tests by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, a representative of which came to Kyiv to collect the samples. Poroshenko called it an issue of national security and his representatives criticized Zelenskiy for not showing up to take the same tests.
“You just need to come and pee,” Oleg Medvedev, Poroshenko’s campaign spokesman, noted at a briefing on April 10.
Black PR has also been used against Poroshenko: a photo with his campaign slogan “Think” was featured by a road, pierced with bullet holes. The photo was shared thousands of times, but turned out to be a fake created by a supporter of Zelenskiy, according to Vitaliy Moroz, a social media and internet security expert. Moroz wrote on Facebook that the unaltered photo was taken in Russia back in 2010.
Another Zelenskiy supporter, 1+1 TV channel journalist Oleksandr Dubinsky, posted an anti-Poroshenko online sticker, which in coarse language says “Poroshenko out.” Facebook users should repost the sticker “to finish the animal,” Dubinsky wrote on Facebook on April 11.
But supporters of Poroshenko can sometimes do as much damage to his political as his opponents.
Blogger Yuriy Biriukov on April 5 posted a photo of Poroshenko in the uniform of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was known for using stadiums to imprison and exterminate his political opponents. Poroshenko’s smiling face in Pinochet’s uniform appeared with the words “a stadium it is” – the phrase used by Poroshenko when he answered Zelenskiy’s proposal to hold the political debate at Olimpiyskiy Stadium in Kyiv.
President Petro Poroshenko in the uniform of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. (Facebook)
Biriukov later removed the post.
Actual campaign billboards of Poroshenko that started to appear on April 8 have also backfired. In the posters, Poroshenko stands face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Under the image are the words “April 21. A decisive choice.”
The image has spawned a number of photoshopped parodies, such as one depicting Poroshenko and Putin shaking hands under the billboard, and another of them kissing.
A photoshopped parody of President Petro Poroshenko’s election billboards. Here Poroshenko is kissing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. (Facebook)
On April 11 many of these billboards were replaced, with only Poroshenko remaining in the image.
Zelenskiy’s team has also poked fun at the billboards with Poroshenko and Putin, posting a parody image of Zelenskiy standing face-to-face with a Xenomorph – the space monster from the “Alien” science fiction movie franchise.
