Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Andriy Portnov is wanted in Ukraine for embezzlement. He was wanted on suspicion of embezzlement, but the case against him was closed in 2016. According to UNIAN and other news agencies, a criminal case on suspected treason was opened in March 2018 by the Crimean prosecutor’s office in exile and was being pursued by the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU.
Home to Chechen emigres and Russian contract killers, the Austrian capital of Vienna has lately welcomed a new breed: self-proclaimed Ukrainian political dissidents.
In addition to longtime resident oligarch Dmytro Firtash, Vienna has come to host former Viktor Yanukovych-era gray cardinal Andriy Portnov and Strana.ua editor Ihor Guzhva, both critics of the Ukrainian government and both dogged by persistent allegations of Kremlin ties.
Austria’s granting them residency comes as Russia has made public overtures towards Vienna. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Vienna first after his reelection, and also attended the August wedding of Austria’s foreign minister, even dancing with her in a moment captured by a widely circulated photograph.
At the same time, the country’s lax banking culture and relative proximity to Ukraine (the western Ukrainian city Uzhhorod is closer to Vienna than Kyiv) make it a prime destination for those with a taste for graft.
Take it from Portnov himself.
“There’s a Kyiv-Vienna flight four times a day,” Portnov told the Kyiv Post. “It’s the most comfortable place for Ukrainian political communication.”
Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko called Vienna the third-most popular destination for Ukrainian oligarchs and corrupt officials, after London and the Cote d’Azur.
“There’s a real concentration of people from Ukraine, both there on business and temporary political émigrés,” Fesenko said.
Meeting ground
Portnov and Firtash can enjoy their Viennese digs thanks to a legacy that reaches back to the end of World War II.
The Nazi defeat left Austria under joint Soviet-Western occupation until 1955, when troops left the country amid promises that Austria would stick to policy of perpetual neutrality.
To this day, Austria has not joined NATO. As a neutral country, it played a role as a meeting ground between the USSR and the West during the Cold War.
From there, Austria has played backdrop to a rich history of post-Soviet power and graft, starting in the 1980s with Donau Bank, a Vienna lender that the KGB allegedly set up to funnel money into the West.
After the USSR collapsed and oligarch classes across the former Soviet Union came into existence, many bought homes around Austria and opened accounts with the country’s banks. The Vienna-based Raiffeisen Bank was notably pressured by the U.S. Justice Department in 2006 to pull out of a deal to finance a gas trading scheme by RosUkrEnergo, a middleman firm partly owned by Russian Gazprom and Firtash.
Under the administration of President Viktor Yanukovych, the Serhiy and Andriy Klyuyev brothers ran businesses out of Vienna that received multimillion-dollar loans from Ukrainian state banks. And in the aftermath of the revolution, Firtash cut a political deal between President Petro Poroshenko and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko that saw each arrive at their current positions.
To this day, consultants from the Center of Political Solutions – hired both by Klitschko and currently by the 43-seat Opposition Bloc, a successor to the Party of Regions – frequently travel to Vienna, posting from the city’s glamorous hotels on social media.
Some see Vienna’s consideration of political asylum to Guzhva and flirting with Putin as a return to a “middle-ground” policy between Russia and the West.
“Vienna, by granting political asylum to Ukrainian opposition leaders and major political players is showing that it can play a role in not only internal European Union politics, but foreign politics,” said Andrii Telizhenko, a Kyiv political consultant and an ex-diplomat who appeared on NewsOne.
One Western Vienna-based diplomat, who isn’t authorized to speak to the press, said the uncertain reputation of Poroshenko is among the reasons for Austria to warm up to Russia.
“European leaders aren’t sure whether Poroshenko is as corrupt, or potentially worse than the previous regime,” said the source. “It makes [Vladimir] Putin seem more appealing.”
The Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to repeated requests for comment.
Portnov’s complaint
Portnov, 44, was the deputy head of Yanukovych administration and one of the most influential figures of the ex-president’s circle at the time of the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution. Portnov, with Yanukovych and a handful of other top officials, fled Ukraine in late February 2014, escaping the aftermath of the murders of more than 100 demonstrators and the criminal charges that ensued.
After the revolution, Portnov was wanted in Ukraine for embezzlement, but the case against him was closed in 2016. According to UNIAN and other news agencies, a criminal case of suspected treason was opened against him in March 2018.
As a key player of Yanukovych’s regime, he was sanctioned by the EU following the revolution, but won a case to lift the sanctions.
Like many other former regime’s players and sympathizers, Portnov refers to the revolution as an illegal coup d’état.
“The sanctions forced me to live in Russia in 2014,” Portnov said. “Because of the coup d’état, I had nowhere to go.”
“But it doesn’t mean anything,” he added.
Not surprisingly, Portnov faces near-constant accusations of being a Kremlin front. Politicians from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko argue that he’s a front for Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian politician and a close friend of Putin. Medvedchuk is seen as a main guardian of the Russian interests in Ukraine.
Portnov denies the allegations. When asked by the Kyiv Post of his ties to Russia, Portnov retorted: “You know Petro Poroshenko was economy minister under Yanukovych, right?” He added: “Let them show one piece of evidence that I am pro-Russian.”
But equally as ubiquitous in descriptions of Portnov is admiration for his status as an influential attorney.
Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko attributed this in part to his work in the Yanukovych years on developing the country’s criminal code, saying that he has remained “one of Ukraine’s most influential lawyers” under Poroshenko.
“He knows how to use the criminal code – he created it,” Fesenko said. “Even though he’s an emigre, Portnov has managed to retain his influence.”
In October 2015, Portnov won a landmark case as the EU general court lifted sanctions against him, finding that Ukrainian prosecutors had failed to supply enough evidence to keep the penalties in place.
He sued Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in November 2017 in a bid to remove sanctions imposed by Ottawa, saying that asset freezes associated with the measures “publicly humiliated” him. That case remains pending.
Guzhva
The other high-profile Vienna émigré, Guzhva, fled Ukraine after he was indicted with blackmail and extortion in July 2017. A freeze on his passport was lifted in January 2018, and he immediately flew to Vienna.
A video released by prosecutors showed Guzhva discussing soliciting money from lawmakers for dropping negative stories about them.
Guzhva, currently awaiting approval of his political asylum application, declined to comment through an intermediary. Earlier, he denied the blackmail allegations and said the episode in the video was taken out of context and came as part of a fabricated case in an effort to shut down his website, Strana.ua.
Strana takes an anti-government stance and is frequently criticized for sympathizing with ex-members of Yanukovych circle. In an August story, Strana referred to Portnov as a “famous blogger, lawyer, and human rights advocate.”
Another time, in a June article claiming that Poroshenko and associates were funneling cash to Spain in order to build a real estate empire there, the website stated that the article was based by a private investigation “prepared by (exiled) MP Oleksandr Onyshchenko with legal help from Andriy Portnov.”
Taras Berezovets, a Kyiv-based political consultant sympathetic to Poroshenko’s administration, tweeted after Guzhva left for Vienna that “Austria long ago became a comfortable hub for all lovers of the Russian world. It’s easier to love Russia from a Viennese confectionary than from a Voronezh bakery.”
NewsOne
The Vienna-based Portnov has recently increased his political influence in Ukraine, and did so through the politicians’ usual medium – television.
Portnov received management rights to the NewsOne news channel in August, signing a three-year lease with its owner Yevhen Muraiev, an independent lawmaker.
NewsOne and Strana.ua are not the only Austria-linked Ukrainian media outlets: Firtash owns a stake in TV station Inter, while newsmagazine “Ukrainian Week” is partly controlled by an Austrian businessman.
NewsOne has taken a similar editorial line to Strana.ua, featuring many former Party of Regions politicos and taking a hard stance against Poroshenko.
The channel has become known in Ukraine for melting the minds of its viewers through allegedly paid-for appearances and interviews. If the channel has a consistent editorial line, it consists in arguing that “Ukraine is secretly being governed from abroad.”
Portnov is unlikely to change that.
He told the Kyiv Post he wanted NewsOne to show the 2019 presidential candidates whom “Poroshenko is forbidding the other channels from showing.”
He added, denying again any ties with Kremlin, that he thought Poroshenko’s successor must sit at a table with the Russians and “negotiate” a way out of the “conflict with Russia.”
He argued that his location in Vienna, beyond Ukraine’s borders, made it “impossible to apply pressure” to him.
“They’ve been after me for years,” he said. “But it’s impossible to pressure me.”
Portnov denied acquiring NewsOne on the order of Putin’s friend Medvedchuk, whose associates recently took control of another TV station, Channel 112.
Medvedchuk’s office, when asked for comment, referred the Kyiv Post to an interview that Portnov did with Guzhva’s Strana.ua in which he denied the allegations.
Not everyone is persuaded, however.
“Nothing has changed,” said Sergey Vysotsky, a member of parliament from the 81-people People’s Front, currently allied with Poroshenko’s faction in parliament, and a former journalist. “We have a ton of TV channels that this way or that way belong to the Kremlin. So they’ve just put on a new suit.”
