Editor’s note: As part of its Election Watch project, the Kyiv Post publishes stories assessing the state of the presidential race in Ukraine’s regions. The stories are submitted by local Ukrainian journalists and translated by the Kyiv Post. The project is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. The donor has no influence on the content.
Five years ago, Vinnytsya Oblast suddenly found itself in the spotlight of Ukraine’s politics.
Right after the EuroMaidan Revolution of 2013-2014, numerous representatives of the local elites reached top national posts, including Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.
In 2019, their positions are shaky. The support of the voters in the Vinnytsya Oblast can help them stay in national politics for the next five years.
Poroshenko’s base
Although he isn’t a native of Vinnytsya, ex-President Petro Poroshenko was the first heavyweight politician to make Vinnytsya his political base.
In 1996, Poroshenko’s company Ukrprominvest privatized a confectionary factory in Vinnytsya, a major employer in the region.
Two years later, Poroshenko started his political career in Vinnytsya. He got first elected to Ukraine’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada, in the single-member district No.12 in Vinnytsya in 1998. This district spreads over a part of the city of Vinnytsya and in its suburbs.
Sixteen years later, in 2014, Poroshenko’s son Oleksiy Poroshenko got elected to the Verkhovna Rada in this district as well. Like Poroshenko, his son doesn’t live in Vinnytsya. The ex-president still owns the confectionery factory in the city.
“In Vinnytsya, people less often see Petro Poroshenko as a representative of their region. Many even grow indignant when people connect Poroshenko with Vinnytsya Oblast,” says Olena Danilova, an analyst and coordinator of Vinnytsya branch in Centre UA, a Kyiv-based think tank.
According to Danilova, the results of the 2019 presidential elections show that the residents of Vinnytsya Oblast lost trust in Poroshenko.
Five years ago, he won the support of 67.3 percent of the voters in the region in the 2014 presidential election. In 2019, Poroshenko won only 22.4 percent of support in the first round of elections, and 34.7 percent in the second round. His challenger Volodymyr Zelensky won almost as much as Poroshenko, 23.4 percent, in the first round, yet smashed him in the second round, getting 63 percent. In December 2018, the anti-rating of Poroshenko in Vinnytsya Oblast amounted to 78 percent, according to Rating sociology group.
Groysman’s home
Groysman is another representative of the political elites from Vinnytsya Oblast who got to the national level. In February 2014, then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk invited Groysman, then-mayor of Vinnytsya, to become deputy prime minister focusing on regional development. Groysman agreed and quit the mayor post. With Poroshenko’s support, Groysman also managed to get elected to the Verkhovna Rada the same year on the ticket of Poroshenko’s party. Soon after the election, Groysman became the speaker of the parliament.
A political crisis broke out in Ukraine in 2016 due to the bickering of the members of the ruling coalition. The crisis got resolved when Groysman was appointed prime minister in April 2016. Two of Groysman’s aides from his times as the mayor of Vinnytsya joined him in the government. Volodymyr Kistion became deputy prime minister, and Andriy Reva was appointed the social policy minister.
Now Groysman is leading his own party, Ukrainian Strategy, in the July 21 election. Will Vinnytsya back its former mayor?
“Vinnytsya Oblast voters are facing a dilemma,” Danilova says. “On the one hand, various sociological surveys show that in Vinnytsya 15-20 percent are ready to vote for Volodymyr Groysman’s party. On the other hand, people in the city and the region want to see ‘new faces’ in politics. So Volodymyr Zelensky’s party has the highest ratings.”
“Vinnytsya is the best city for life,” runs the city’s informal slogan.
Vinnytsya first won the title of the most comfortable city for living in Ukraine in 2015. The Rating sociology group and the International Republican Institute run an annual survey of the level of satisfaction of the residents of different Ukrainian cities. Since 2015, Vinnytsya won every year.
Ihor Tyshchenko, the founder of the Rating group, said that Vinnytsya won in 2015 thanks to the citizens’ loyalty to their then-mayor, Groysman.
Groysman became the mayor of Vinnytsya in 2006 at the age of 28, setting a record for the youngest mayor in Ukraine. Many development projects were accomplished when Groysman was at the city’s helm. Old-style district administrative offices were turned into new “transparent offices” in 2008, public transport improved, new roads were laid, water pipes partially renewed.
Groysman’s legacy lived on in Vinnytsya even after he moved to Kyiv. His aide Serhiy Morgunov, who became the mayor after Groysman, preserved the good image of Groysman in the city. In 2018, Regional Doing Business ranking recognized Vinnytsya as the city with the best entrepreneurial climate in Ukraine.
“Voters in Vinnytsya know that their city is cutting edge according to Ukraine’s development indicators,” Danilova says, adding that these successes might bring Groysman votes in the July 21 elections.
During the 2019 presidential election, Groysman supported Poroshenko’s bid for the second term. But he didn’t join Poroshenko’s party in the parliamentary elections. Instead, Groysman started Ukrainian Strategy, his own party. Mere days before the election, Groysman went on the offensive against his former ally and accused Poroshenko of vote-buying.
Capturing the voter
“In fact, parties do not present their political programs to the voters in the regions,” says Vladyslav Telen, a regional representative of election watchdog Committee of Voters of Ukraine. “Their representatives erect electoral stands, distribute leaflets, which don’t have details about the parties’ plans. The major goal of their activities is to influence the voters in such a manner that they remember the party and that there is a certain representative of the party in the region.”
According to Telen, there is one distinctive feature of the campaign in Vinnytsya Oblast – almost every political force organizes concerts or other festivities for voters. Thus, Oleh Vynnyk, a pop star, performed for the residents of Kryzhopil, a provincial town in the south of Vinnytsya Oblast, while campaigning for the Agrarian Party.
“Candidates in single-member districts have grown extremely active during this year’s elections if compared to the 2014 elections,” Telen says. “They are running classical election campaigns, unlike the parties: they organize many meetings with voters, attend festivals or other events in towns and villages, go from door to door.”
A total of 108 candidates are running in this year’s elections in Vinnytsya Oblast’s eight electoral districts. That makes an average of 13 candidates per district.
Only sixteen of 108 candidates have participated in elections earlier, seven of which are members of parliament currently. They are Ruslan Demchak, Mykola Kucher, Yuriy Makedon, Ivan Sporysh, Petro Yurchyshyn, Serhiy Kudlayenko, and Ivan Melnychuk.
Out of all the registered candidates in Vinnytsya Oblast, only 36 have experience in local councils or governance. That is, 67 percent of the candidates are political novices. 52 percent of the candidates have been nominated by parties, and the rest are running as self-nominees.
A poll conducted by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Rating sociology group and Razumkov center shows five strongest parties in the elections: Servant of the People (the party of Zelensky), Opposition Platform For life (led by Yuriy Boyko), European Solidarity (Petro Poroshenko), Batkivshchyna (Yuliya Tymoshenko) and Golos (Svyatoslav Vakarchuk).
The Servant of the People is the only party that nominated its people in each of the eight electoral districts of Vinnytsya Oblast. None of them have any previous political experience.
Batkivshchyna party runs with seven candidates in the region. The most famous candidate from Tymoshenko’s party in Vinnytsya Oblast is singer Anastasiya Prykhodko. She has no connection to the region. She told a local TV channel that she wants to represent the interests of the whole Ukraine in parliament, and not those of her constituency.
Poroshenko’s European Solidarity also nominated seven candidates. Among them, there is one current member of parliament, deputies of the regional governor, and chair of a small district council.
Opposition Platform For Life runs with six candidates in Vinnytsya Oblast, whereas Golos party has only one nominee.
Among the notorious candidates is ex-lawmaker Hryhoriy Kaletnyk. Kaletnyk was in parliament in 2012-2014 as a member of the Party of Regions, the party of the ousted ex-president Viktor Yanukovych. Kaletnyk voted for the so-called “dictatorship laws” on Jan. 16, 2014, which gave an additional impetus to the popular EuroMaidan revolution that drove Yanukovych from office and out of the country.
A specialty of the campaign in Vinnytsya Oblast is the activity of Groysman’s Ukrainian Strategy party. The prime minister appears to be betting on his home region.
“In each town of Vinnytsya Oblast you can see a campaign tent or representatives of the party, ” says Telen. “Most of the posters and other advertising are Groysman’s. You can say that in Vinnytsya Oblast the Ukrainian Strategy runs the most active campaign of all other parties.”
Ironically, the Ukrainian Strategy has no nominees in any of the region’s eight single-member districts.
