On paper, President Volodymyr Zelensky reigns supreme. He handpicks the government and controls the parliament with his Servant of the People party, which has 22 seats more than a majority.
In a laudatory TV documentary celebrating Zelensky’s first year in office, which aired on all major channels on April 22, the president said he is content with the work of his party.
“One hundred and eighty laws in eight months in office,” Zelensky said. “Who else has done that?”
In reality, Zelensky has fewer reasons to celebrate. His 248-member party is currently torn by internal conflicts. Many members disobey the party leadership and Zelensky himself. As a result, the party that holds an unprecedented majority of seats can’t pass crucial legislation anymore without the help of the opposition.
The crisis became especially clear on April 11, when Servant of the People lawmakers needed to change parliamentary bylaws to prevent the party’s own members from blocking critical banking legislation.
At the core of the issue is a low-level war between two distinct, but loosely organized factions in the party. One consists of lawmakers who support legislation beneficial to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. The other is a group of pro-Western lawmakers sometimes referred to as Democratic Platform.
Both groups can count on over 30 votes. And Zelensky is increasingly having trouble with both flanks.
Pro-Western lawmakers have publicly criticized the president’s recent attempt to begin direct negotiations with Russian-led militants who occupy parts of eastern Ukraine. Critics say that is tantamount to recognizing them as a legitimate political entity, something Ukraine has never done during the six years of war.
Meanwhile, Kolomoisky-aligned lawmakers have submitted over 16,000 amendments in an attempt to block a law that would outlaw the return of nationalized banks to their previous owners. The law specifically targets the oligarch, who is seeking the return of PrivatBank, which was nationalized in 2016 due to alleged bank fraud.
Should Ukraine fail to pass this law, it can kiss a much-needed $8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund goodbye.
From the beginning, it was clear that Zelensky’s party would run into trouble, says political consultant Vitaly Bala. Made up of a patchwork of political newcomers, the party lacked a concrete ideology. The virtual unknowns included on the parliamentary ballot were poorly vetted, the analyst says.
“It was never going to work,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Kolomoisky’s helping hand
After winning the April 2019 presidential elections in a landslide, Zelensky seized the momentum and called snap parliamentary elections.
There was one problem: The newly elected president lacked a political party that could ride his popularity into the parliament.
Zelensky promptly created the Servant of the People, a party named after the hit TV series in which he played an idealized, everyman Ukrainian president. The next step was finding members.
“During the election campaign, a lot of people were brought in with different (political) interests. says Bala.
They came recommended by people pushing a variety of interests and passed little vetting.
One person who helped fill the party was Kolomoisky, whose television channels aired Zelensky’s comedy shows and later actively promoted his candidacy during the presidential race.
Lawmakers Oleksandr Dubinsky, Olga Vasylevska-Smaglyuk, Serhiy Shvets and Oleksandr Tkachenko all came from Kolomoisky’s 1+1 channel. Tkachenko was the channel’s long-time director.
Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky is photographed in the corridors of Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv on March 4, 2020. (UNIAN)
Additionally, multiple people were chosen from the low-profile Ukrop party, which was created and sponsored by Kolomoisky in 2014. Among them were Ihor Fris, Oleksandr Matusevych, Vyacheslav Rublyuov, Dmytro Chornyi, Oleksandr Yurchenko, Bogdan Yaremenko, Vladyslav Borodin and Serhiy Demchenko.
All of them have intricate connections to the oligarch.
Fris and Matusevych were formerly aides to Oleksandr Shevchenko, a 2019 presidential candidate nominated by Ukrop. Shevchenko was co-owner of the Bukovel ski resort in partnership with Kolomoisky.
Rublyuov was a long-time advisor to Ihor Palytsya, the unofficial leader of the Ukrop party and the long-time head of the Ukrnafta oil company controlled by Kolomoisky. Palytsya, who previously served as governor of Odesa Oblast and headed the Volyn Oblast council, was elected to parliament in 2019 through a local single-member district as an independent. The neighboring district was won by Iryna Konstankevych, a former Ukrop party member.
Palytsya and Konstankevych joined a separate 22-member parliamentary faction called For the Future, which is also associated with Kolomoisky. It includes several of the oligarch’s business partners. The faction’s leader, Viktor Bondar, proposed nearly 2,000 amendments to the bank law.
Additionally, Dubinsky, a former 1+1 host, aligned himself with several popular bloggers elected on the Servant of the People party ticket, including Maksym Buzhansky and Oleksandr Kunytsky, who tend to vote with him in parliament.
The party also features businessmen with ties to Kolomoisky, such as Oleg Dunda, who formerly headed a construction company owned by the oligarch’s Privat Group. He proposed 1,656 amendments to the bank law. Dubinsky and Vasylevska-Smaglyuk each proposed over 1,000 amendments.
“The Kolomoisky group is very easy to spot,” political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko said.
Other agendas
Kolomoisky wasn’t the only influential figure whose associates were able to snag spots in Zelensky’s party.
Individuals close to Zelensky brought small groups of their own associates into Servant of the People, further fragmenting the party.
Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 production studio gave a political start to actor Yuriy Koryavchenkov and lawyers Oleksandr Kachura and Serhiy Ionushas. The two lawyers used to represent Kvartal 95 in court.
Additionally, Andriy Yermak, a copyright lawyer with business ties to Kvartal 95, became the president’s aide and later chief of staff. The studio’s screenwriter, Serhiy Shefir, became Zelensky’s top advisor.
Yermak and Shefir are said to be Zelensky’s closest advisors and influence the president’s decision-making.
Yermak brought his business partner Andriy Kholodov and his friend Mykola Tyshchenko, a well-known Kyiv restaurateur, into parliament.
Yermak’s predecessor as chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, brought several people into office himself, most notably ex-Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk. Before taking office, Honcharuk led the Better Regulation Delivery Office, a government-sponsored think tank.
Honcharuk brought University of Oxford graduate Lisa Yasko and Roksolana Pidlasa, a former advisor to the economy minister, into the legislature.
Yasko was later elected head of Ukraine’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, while Pidlasa became deputy head of the parliament’s economic committee.
Bohdan, Kolomoisky’s former lawyer, gave a spot on the party ticket to Mykyta Poturaev, a political consultant working with the Ukrop party. Poturaev would soon become the ideologue of the so-called Democratic Platform and verbally attack lawmakers linked to Kolomoisky.
Additionally, several lawmakers got their seats in parliament at the recommendation of Andriy Vavrysh, a controversial real estate developer and former top official at the Kyiv city administration who is Bohdan’s long-time friend.
Those linked to Vavrysh include Oleksandr Horenuk, Dmytro Guryn and Anna Bondar – all three worked under Vavrysh either in business or during his time in the city administration.
Vavrysh’s friend, art director Geo Leros, was also elected to parliament. In late March, Leros became well-known after he published video recordings that allegedly showed Yermak’s brother Denys attempting to sell government jobs for money.
Ukrainian media have also widely reported that Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has a working relationship with several lawmakers from the Servant of the People party. Among them is Denys Monastyrsky, who was an assistant to Anton Gerashchenko during his time in parliament. Gerashchenko is Avakov’s deputy and closest ally.
Monastyrsky heads the parliament’s law enforcement committee and supports a law that would expand the powers of the National Guard, which is controlled by Avakov. Additionally, several lawmakers worked for Avakov in the interior ministry prior to becoming lawmakers, and Avakov’s political ally Andriy Ivanchuk leads the 20-member Trust faction in parliament.
Avakov and Ivanchuk were members of the 82-member People’s Front faction in the previous parliament.
“The party is very eclectic, very diverse,” says Fesenko.
Disintegration
At first, Zelensky’s patchwork party worked. During the inaugural parliamentary session on Aug. 29, lawmakers appointed the Cabinet and voted for the prosecutor general handpicked by Zelensky.
Swiftly voting for Zelensky’s campaign promises was termed the “turbo regime.” It lasted for several months. But with time, it became clear that, to appease one group inside the party, one needs to disenfranchise the other.
The party began to experience internal feuds. Lawmakers created separate internal chats on messenger apps. The party’s internal memos were often leaked to the press through anonymous channels on the Telegram messenger, which became a major source of political gossip, often mixed with fake news.
Lawmaker Dubinsky, one of Kolomoisky’s voices in parliament, took on harshly criticizing the government and his fellow lawmakers on television and social media, where he enjoys a large following. At the same time, Kolomoisky went on the offensive. He told the Kyiv Post he was sure that he would get Privatbank back. He told the New York Times that Ukraine should break ties with its Western donors and take money from the Kremlin.
The oligarch is entangled in court cases against now state-owned PrivatBank in Ukraine, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Cyprus. The bank claims that he had siphoned off $5.5 billion dollars, basing that figure on the conclusions of a forensic audit of PrivatBank. Kolomoisky denies that and claims that the bank was stolen from him.
However, not all lawmakers acclaimed Kolomoisky’s imposition.
In mid-March, lawmaker Poturaev sent a document to his colleagues from Servant of the People announcing the formation of a group within the party called Democratic Platform.
Poturaev told the Kyiv Post that it was merely a proposal to unite liberal, reform-minded lawmakers who support the president.
“When the loudest voice from the party is Dubinsky, while liberals remain quiet, it’s not right,” Poturaev told the Kyiv Post at the time.
The group shared messages on Facebook in support of the bank law and lifting Ukraine’s longstanding moratorium on land sales. It also challenged the president on issues such as direct talks with Russian-led militants.
“We’re united by a set of principles, not based on political views,” said Poturaev. “We support the president and his reforms,” he added.
Lawmaker Mykyta Poturaev wears a mask and uses hand sanitizer, during the emergency parliament session on March 17, 2020. (Andrii Nesterenko)
However, the group was never strictly defined, with some issues drawing more support and others receiving significantly less.
“We were never a registered entity,” says Poturaev.
According to one pro-Western lawmaker from Servant of the People who requested anonymity as they are not authorized to speak with the press by the party’s leadership, the so-called Democratic Platform is merely an illusion.
“There isn’t a strictly formed group. Rather, it’s some lawmakers who have certain values and agree on some things,” the lawmaker said.
Another lawmaker from the pro-Western flank of the party, who requested anonymity for the same reason, said that many in the party support ideas put forth by the Democratic Platform, but no one has invited them to join any formal group.
“Unlike the Dubinsky group, which is strictly defined and votes accordingly, Democratic Platform is more of a concept,” said the lawmaker.
To that, Poturaev says that his group is “not a dictatorship” to tell its members how to vote.
“Each lawmaker (in Democratic Platform) is free to vote how he sees fit,” Poturaev told the Kyiv Post.
Zelensky’s final ace
With his party lacking unity, Zelensky is heavily reliant on the opposition parties to pass crucial bills.
In the April 22 documentary, Zelensky said that lifting the land moratorium was the parliament’s biggest achievement and now he expects the bank law to follow.
However, Servant of the People gave 20 votes less than needed for the farmland law to pass. And the bank law would have failed to pass its first reading by one vote were it not for the opposition.
Instead, the much-needed votes came from the European Solidarity party led by former President Petro Poroshenko and the Voice party led by rock musician-turned-politician Svyatoslav Vakarchuk.
Both parties are in opposition to Zelensky.
Additionally, on March 30, Servant of the People did not support all the appointees in Zelensky’s reshuffle of the government. The economy minister was only later appointed with the support of the Voice party. The health minister largely passed because of backing from the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life party.
The candidate for energy minister was recalled by the president due to a lack of parliamentary support. She was later appointed acting minister, which doesn’t require a vote in parliament.
Fesenko says that the president’s office must sometimes get creative to attract votes.
“It’s like they’re playing the piano, sometimes pressing the Voice chords, sometimes pressing the Opposition Platform ones,” says Fesenko.
However, none of the lawmakers and political experts who talked to the Kyiv Post see an official party split and a snap parliamentary election as a real possibility.
Poturaev’s Democratic Platform officially claims to be Zelensky’s main support group, while lawmakers who supposedly represent Kolomoisky don’t have that many laws on their agenda. They have no reason for a full-fledged break from the party.
Additionally, Zelensky is still the most popular politician in Ukraine. Over 40% of Ukrainians are still willing to vote for him, according to the most recent poll by the Rating Group.
“As long as Zelensky’s electoral rating remains high, there is no need for a parliament shake-up,” says Bala. “(Zelensky) is using that.”
Fesenko agrees. He says that individual lawmakers lack public support and they understand that — even the Kolomoisky group.
“Kolomoisky doesn’t want an all-out war,” Fesenko said.
Yet despite that, it’s clear that the parliament’s work is far from what the president expected after the parliamentary elections.
“There is no majority party. Rather, it’s a situational coalition based on some common interests,” says Bala.
