President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party on Feb. 11 named famous strength athlete Vasyl Virastyuk as the party’s candidate for the upcoming parliamentary by-elections scheduled for March 28.
“I’m not going to lie, the offer came from the president,” Virastyuk told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty after the party announced his candidacy.
According to Virastyuk, if elected, he will join the parliament’s sports committee and lobby the creation of a rehabilitation center for Ukraine’s war veterans.
The election will take place in a constituency in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, around 700 kilometers west of Kyiv.
The parliament seat, which Virastyuk will compete for, became vacant in early November after Servant of the People lawmaker Zynovyi Andryiovych won the mayoral race in the city of Nadvirna — also Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. As a result, Andryivovych resigned from parliament.
Virastyuk is expected to face a serious rivalry, as most of the Ukrainian parties are nominating well-known politicians to compete for the only parliament seat up for grabs.
The 27-member European Solidarity party, led by ex-President Petro Poroshenko, nominated a well-known army volunteer Olena Bilenka, better known as Marusya Zvirobiy, to compete in the by-elections.
The For the Future (Za Maibutne) party, which has 24 lawmakers in parliament and is linked to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, nominated Oleksandr Shevchenko as their candidate in the upcoming elections. Shevchenko is the director of Ukraine’s famous ski resort Bukovel, owned by Kolomoisky.
Furthermore, Svoboda party spokesperson Khrystyna Ravlyuk told the Kyiv Post that the party will nominate former lawmaker Ruslan Koshulynsky to compete in the race. In October, Koshulynsky came third in the Lviv mayoral race, receiving 9% of the vote.
Unlike his competitors, Virastyuk is a newbie in politics. Virastyuk is best known for his win in the 2004 World’s Strongest Man competition. After finishing his strongman career, Virastyuk often appeared in Ukrainian movies and TV shows.
