Trailing in the polls, but promising a robust fight to be re-elected on March 31, President Petro Poroshenko officially launched his campaign on Jan. 29.
For the big day, Poroshenko rented the largest conference hall in the country and brought his family, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and most of the government, parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, lawmakers, mayors, local officials, famous Ukrainian scholars, writers, singers, actors and movie directors to the invitation-only event.
Poroshenko warned them that if he loses then Russia will get control over Ukraine. He promised that if he wins, Ukraine will apply for membership in the European Union in 2024.
But it’s still unclear if his warnings, promises and nationalist slogans — army, language and faith — will be enough.
Poroshenko is popular with Ukraine’s cultural elite, among the diaspora community and with foreigners. But ordinary Ukrainians, who will decide the election, are suffering from poverty, injustice and rampant corruption. And these voters tend to blame this on Poroshenko, who won their votes by a landslide on May 25, 2014, on the heels of the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, from power.
Poroshenko trails comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy and by some polls also ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. “If he is simultaneously behind both Tymoshenko and Zelenskiy all his efforts are in vain,” said political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko.
Following Tymoshenko
Poroshenko’s forum resembled Tymoshenko’s Congress, held exactly a week before his event.
While Tymoshenko organized her venue in centrally located Palats Sportu concert hall that fits up to 10,000 spectators, Poroshenko rented Kyiv’s International Exhibition Centre on the city’s left bank, which has room for 11,000 people. In the end, they both had about an equal number of people at their events.
Pop singer Oleksandr Ponomariov performed at Tymoshenko’s Congress, while Poroshenko had the musical services of Taras Chubay. Tymoshenko had ex-President Leonid Kravchuk while Poroshenko invited ex-president Viktor Yushchenko. Leader of the old Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchy Patriarch Filaret spoke for Tymoshenko. Leader of the newly formed Orthodox Church in Ukraine Patriarch Epiphanius came for Poroshenko.
Both events were infused with references to Ukraine’s history and the challenge of defeating Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Students from the youth branches of their parties were deployed. At Poroshenko’s forum, some 150 young people were living props. They sat at the stage, smiling and clapping. At the end of the event, they all stood behind Poroshenko to sing the national anthem.
Just like Tymoshenko’s speech, Poroshenko paid attention to social issues and promised big improvements if he gets re-elected. “Poverty is our enemy, probably not the lesser one than our enemy the Russian Federation.”
Both candidates also made bitter remarks towards each other.
While Tymoshenko accused Poroshenko of profiteering at war, Poroshenko reminded about Tymoshenko’s unfavorable 2009 gas deal with Russia. He also accused her of attempts to usurp power with her new project of a parliamentary republic where most powers granted to the chancellor and warned about the danger of populistic promises.
“Do we want to catch up with our more successful Western neighbors or, to the contrary, to roll down to the level of Venezuela?” Poroshenko asked.
Forum visitors
Unlike at Tymoshenko’s congress, visitors to Poroshenko’s forum had little clue what to expect there. The forum’s name “From Kruty to Brussels. We are heading our own way” had a vague topic, linking little-connected things.
Kruty is a Ukrainian national tragedy. It is a small railway station, where some Ukrainian 400 soldiers, mostly students, stood to defend Kyiv against the 10 times larger Bolshevik army in 1918. All of them died. The forum happened on the anniversary of the tragic event.
“Maybe they will show us a movie about Kruty here?” wondered Liudmyla Fedina, a Ukrainian language teacher from a village of Kyiv Oblast. Fedina wasn’t sure she would vote for Poroshenko. “We will travel more, will see the candidates, read programs and then will decide,” she said.
Alina Ilyenko, 19, a law student from Chernihiv, said she came to the forum with some other students on a organized bus trip. She said they were invited by their professor. She said she has already decided who she wants, but didn’t want to reveal her choice.
A group of activists unrolled a banner with a question “Who killed Kateryna Gandziuk?” Gandziuk was an outspoken Kherson deputy mayor, who was attacked with acid in late July and died at a hospital in November. Her father and friends accused the Kherson top officials of ordering her murder and both Poroshenko’s and Tymoshenko’s parties, to whom these officials belong, of covering them up.
The activists feared Kherson’s governor Andriy Hordeyev and his deputy Yevhen Ryshchuk, who are among those blamed, would show up at Poroshenko’s forum but they weren’t. Instead, there was Kherson Mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko, who said that despite he’s concerned with lack of results in the investigation of Gandziuk’s murder, he strongly supports Poroshenko.
Defectors, supporters
Surprisingly, ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, whose party People Front (Narodny Front) is Poroshenko’s partner in current parliament coalition, was not at the forum. Neither was Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, a member of Yatseniuk’s party and likely the second most influential person in the country.
Fesenko said that Avakov has probably reached an agreement with Tymoshenko, and Yatseniuk is more interested in saving his own party than publicly supporting Poroshenko.
Former President Leonid Kuchma also didn’t show up at the forum and neither did Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, although he endorsed Poroshenko in a video shown at the forum.
Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov, however, was there. Filatov, who had earlier split with oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, praised Poroshenko for decentralization reform. “Poroshenko must be given a bit of credit for every new trolleybus,” he said.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko came up to the stage and, despite being forbidden by law to endorse any candidate, said that his love for country, which is under threat by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is why he’s for Poroshenko.
Vast resources
Visitors of Poroshenko’s forum didn’t hear much about “Army. Language. Faith,” his slogan since summer. Instead, they saw the slogan “Poroshenko or Putin,” with portraits of both presidents, screened on a plasma as a part of a video showing Poroshenko’s main achievements.
Fesenko said Poroshenko’s spin doctors are targetting Tymoshenko, who had good relations with Putin when they both served as prime ministers in the late 2000s.
But while they are focused on each other, they might need to worry more about the rise of Zelenskiy.
Tymoshenko can rely on long-term supporters and a well-developed party structure, despite her high negative rankings.
Poroshenko has leverage over regional and local authority officials, many of whom were at the forum. He also commands the largest faction in parliament with 135 out of 423 members.
Observers of Opora election watchdog warn about a rampant campaigning for Poroshenko by the regional, local authorities and budget-funded organizations.
For instance, in January, Zakarpattia Oblast Governor Hennadiy Moskal endorsed Poroshenko’s re-election on local TV. Zaporizhia Oblast Governor Kostiantyn Bryl granted eight flats to orphans in Melitopol at the expense of the state budget, calling it an “initiative of the president.”
Odesa Oblast Governor Maksym Stepanov has launched the “mobile polyclinics,” the medical teams traveling to the distant villages around the oblast at the trucks branded “Affordable healthcare. Program of the president of Ukraine.” They plan to examine 20,000 people.
