Over the past 14 years, Ukraine had four presidents, seven prime ministers and only one mayor of Lviv.
Now Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi is running for his fourth consecutive term.
Sadovyi has enjoyed moderate success over his long-enduring political career. Seen as a successful city head, Sadovyi was able to elevate himself to the national stage, with his local Samopomich party coming third in the 2014 Ukraine parliamentary elections.
Back then, Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv, was seen as a new face in Ukraine’s obsolete politics.
However, six years later, Sadovyi is struggling to remain afloat even in his hometown. Lviv, home to 720,000 people, is the only major city where the incumbent mayor has a real chance of losing his post, according to polls.
Sadovyi is still the frontrunner, yet his re-election won’t be easy. The mayor’s long tenure and the city’s strong support for Sadovyi’s political opponent ex-President Petro Poroshenko gives his competitors a real shot.
In 2017, Sadovyi’s electoral rating outside Lviv was recycled after a year-long political standoff with Poroshenko over the city’s waste problems. Poroshenko was supported by his handpicked Lviv Oblast Governor Oleh Synutka.
Now, Synutka spearheads Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party in the Lviv’s local election scheduled for Oct. 25.
In the mayor’s race, Synutka is polling second only behind the incumbent, while the European Solidarity party is leading polls for the city council which controls the allocation of funds from the city budget.
The waste crisis is still a major factor in local politics.
Meanwhile, nationalists are also making a comeback. Former lawmaker Ruslan Koshulynskyi, a candidate from the nationalist Svoboda party, is looking to contest Synutka as the challenger in a potential run-off.
Koshulynskyi’s success may pave way for Svoboda’s return onto the national stage.
“There’s a real battle for Lviv,” said Kyiv Mohyla Academy Professor and political commentator Oleksiy Haran.
Broken promise
Like many political campaigns in Ukraine, Sadovyi’s re-election bid started with a scandal. In a 2019 interview with the Kyiv Post, Sadovyi was vocal in his desire to step down as the city’s mayor.
Now, Sadovyi said the need to build a recycling plant in Lviv kept him from retirement.
“It was a hard decision for me, but after beginning to construct the waste recycling plant, it would have been frivolous to stepdown,” Sadovyi told the Kyiv Post.
In December, the mayor announced that the city will construct the plant within two years. A year prior, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) pledged 35 million euros for ecological projects in Ukraine including a recycling plant in Lviv.
To this day, the city spends Hr 1 million daily on garbage removal.
“We completed all preparatory work, we received all necessary legal permits,” said Sadovyi. “It will be one of the first recycling plants in Ukraine.”
His main competitor Synutka campaigns on opposing the construction, promising to find a place for the city’s waste outside city limits.
The Lviv waste crisis began in 2016 with a fire at the city’s main landfill, which caused the collapse of a waste heap. Four emergency services workers were killed.
The landfill, which was located just outside Lviv was closed. The city was covered in waste, with other cities declining to accept garbage truck from Lviv.
Sadovyi alleged that the crisis was a “special operation” ordered by the Presidential Administration to discredit him and his party, which had left the pro-government coalition earlier that year, threatening the coalition’s existence.
Government officials denied that allegation during the crisis.
Haran, who is also the research director of the Democratic Initiatives sociological institute, said that while Poroshenko’s team was able to use the waste crisis to topple Sadovyi’s nationwide rating, the president failed to substantially lower Sadovyi’s support inside the city.
According to the Lviv’s Fama sociological institute, conducted in mid-September, Sadovyi is supported by 35% of Lviv residents, Synutka enjoys a 15% support rate, while Koshulynskyi polls third with 12% of the vote.
Riding Poroshenko’s fame
However, the 2020 local elections are not limited to mayoral races. The ongoing decentralization reform has largely increased local budgets which are controlled by city councils, which made them more important than ever before.
According to the polls, Poroshenko’s party has the edge in Lviv.
During the 2019 presidential election, Lviv Oblast was the only region where Poroshenko was able to defeat Volodymyr Zelensky at the ballot. Poroshenko who ran on a nationalistic platform, built his campaign on accusing Zelensky of being keen to yield to Russian interests.
former Lviv Oblast Governor Oleh Synutka (R) and Ex-President Petro Poroshenko (C) take a picture with students. The photo was published by Synutka on Sept. 26 with a message congratulating Poroshenko on his birthday. (Facebook | Oleh Synutka)
A year later, Lviv remains Poroshenko’s stronghold.
According to the July Rating Group polls, over 20% of the voters will support the European Solidarity party in the upcoming city council election. Fama goes further, giving the president’s party 30% of the vote.
Both polls give Sadovyi’s Samopomich party 18% of the vote.
Synutka largely rides the wave of Poroshenko’s popularity in Lviv. He frequently uses Poroshenko’s support in his speeches, while the former president appears in political ads spread across the city.
Zelensky’s loss
While the former president enjoys substantial support in the city, the country’s current president is looking at a major defeat.
Lviv is on track to become the only regional capital where Zelensky’s Servant of the People party won’t pass the 5% threshold into the city council.
“Servant of the People doesn’t have a strong candidate in Lviv,” said Haran.
On Sept. 2, the Servant of the People nominated military surgeon Taras Klofa as their candidate for the Lviv mayor race. Yet, Klofa is a victim of Zelensky’s low support within Lviv.
According to the July Rating Group poll, 45% of Lviv residents consider the war in Donbas the country’s biggest problem. The same poll showed that 66% of respondents said that they disapprove of Zelensky’s leadership.
Zelensky has long been accused by his political opponents of taking a weak stance against Russia in the conflict.
Nationalists regroup
Contrary to the president’s party, nationalists from Svoboda are seeking to make a comeback into national politics through Lviv.
Prior, Svoboda had a long history with the city, being a powerful force within Lviv, yet lacking a base outside. Yet all changed in 2012 when the party scored an unprecedented 10% in the parliamentary election.
The party largely benefited from the country being led by pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions. Svoboda was seen as an obvious choice for those opposing the regime.
However, the pro-Russian government fell, and the party returned to the regional level, soon it was defeated even in its stronghold — Lviv.
The party was able to regroup. In the 2015 local elections, it won mayoral elections in three regional capitals — Khmelnytskyi, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil — all in western Ukraine.
The mayors turned out to be quite successful, with all three expected to be re-elected in a landslide on Oct. 25.
However, there’s a catch — Ivano-Frankivsk Mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv is known for spreading bigotry, homophobia and for defying the government’s coronavirus restrictions.
In a Sept. 3 interview with Ukrayinska Pravda news outlet, Martsinkiv said that “homosexuals can’t be patriots (of Ukraine).” Earlier, Martsinkiv asked the local police to move Roma people living in Ivano-Frankivsk out of the city.
In a written comment to the Kyiv Post, Koshulynskyi highlighted Martsinkiv’s successes as a mayor and downplayed his moral statements.
“Martsinkiv built six kindergartens in his first term, five more are under construction. In Lviv, the authorities couldn’t build a single one,” wrote Koshulynskyi.
“In Ivano-Frankivsk, he built the ‘Europe’ that some politicians can only promise on election posters,” he adds, referring to Poroshenko’s ads promising a European standard of living.
Concerning Martsinkiv’s public statements, Koshulynskyi said that the Ivano-Frankivsk mayor said what everyone already thinks.
“Every clear-headed Ukrainian will agree with him,” said Koshulynskyi, promptly adding that the media twisted some of Martsinkiv’s words.
Haran said that there are many scandals surrounding Svoboda and its leadership, the party isn’t trusted in Lviv, yet all of the scandals bypass Koshulynskyi.
“Koshulynskyi is spotless,” he said.
Svoboda’s electoral support in Lviv is half of that of Koshulynskyi, according to polls.
Sadovyi said that it is impossible to compare Lviv to other Ukrainian cities.“ Lviv is in a way an island in Ukraine,” he said.
The incumbent Lviv mayor is very careful when talking about his opponents, as after the upcoming election Sadovyi will most likely be forced to cooperate with either one of his opponents in the city council.
