Ukraine’s already unusual presidential election campaign took a turn towards the absurd on April 5 as the incumbent president agreed to a demand from his rival that he undergo a drug test.
Dozens of reporters flocked to Olympic Stadium in central Kyiv at 9 a.m. to film and photograph a video monitor showing President Petro Poroshenko undergoing the tests.
The president submitted blood, urine and hair samples.
Poroshenko’s rival for the presidency, the comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had made undergoing a drug test one of his conditions for debating with the president.
Zelenskiy himself underwent testing at the Eurolab medical center in Kyiv at about 7:30 a.m. He took a blood test and talked to the press afterward.
He said that he would get the results of the tests in three days and would publish them.
Eurolab belongs to Ukrainian businessman Andriy Palchevskyi, who speaks critically of Poroshenko. Asked why he had chosen Eurolab to perform the tests, Zelenskiy said that he knows Palchevskyi, but he wasn’t his friend and that he suggested that he and Poroshenko take the tests at Eurolab because it had a suitable laboratory.
Zelenskiy issued the challenge to Poroshenko to undertake the drug test, and to hold a live televised debate in Kyiv’s largest stadium in a video he released online on April 3.
Poroshenko responded with a slightly menacing video of his own late on April 3, in which he looms slowly into shot against the background of the Presidential Administration, and unsmilingly accepts the challenge, while sarcastically chiding Zelenskiy for not observing the rules for holding presidential debates.
According to Ukrainian law on presidential elections, a debate between the two second-round candidates is to be held on the Friday before voting – which in this presidential election will be on April 19. The second-round vote takes place on April 21.
While the law stipulates that the debate should be televised live, it states that the venue should be the television studios of the national public broadcaster. There is also no stipulation that the candidates should undergo drugs testing. There is no explicit obligation in the law for candidates to take part in the debate.
Zelenskiy responded to Poroshenko’s video on April 4, this time suggesting that the third-place candidate in the first round vote, Batkivshyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko, be an “independent referee” in the debate.
Tymoshenko has been Poroshenko’s bitter political rival for years.
Poroshenko responded with yet another video, released in the early hours of April 5. To a background of dramatic-sounding cinematic music (Zelenskiy’s videos have been backed by high-energy rock music), Poroshenko taunted his rival.
“Volodymyr Oleksandrovich (Zelenskiy), again we address each other through a camera lens,” Poroshenko says in the video. “Don’t be afraid, debates aren’t scary – it’s an ordinary political tradition.”
“Be a man, come to the stadium, I’ll be waiting.”
According to Volodymyr Yaryi, the chief doctor of Kyiv City Narcological Clinical Hospital “Sociotherapy,” express testing of Poroshenko’s blood sample showed no signs of psychoactive drugs. Apart from blood, Poroshenko’s urine and hair are to be examined. The president said he would have more detailed results in a couple of hours and even more detailed results in a couple of days.
Earlier, on April 4, Ukraine’s acting Health Minister Ulana Suprun wrote on Facebook that alcohol and drug tests take two or three days to produce valid results.
“There aren’t many laboratories in Ukraine that can do such testing,” Suprun’s post reads.
“The most up-to-date equipment for this is available only in the Anti-Doping Center of the Olympic Committee,” the post continues.
The Anti-Doping Center of the Olympic Committee says they only take blood samples in Ukraine – the testing of the blood takes place abroad.
Apart from that, Suprun said that drugs or alcohol remain in urine, hair and nails longer than in blood.
Talking to the press, Poroshenko yet again emphasized the importance of holding debates and said that the exchanges between the candidates via video posts on social media should stop.
He also commented on Zelenskiy’s invitation to Tymoshenko to moderate the debate, saying such an invitation was disrespectful to Tymoshenko and her voters.
“The debates are not a show,” he said.
Although Zelenskiy said that the results of his tests would take a couple of days, later in the day his accounts on Facebook and Instagram posted the documents from Eurolab with conclusions that the candidate’s blood showed no signs of psychoactive drugs.
The documents his campaign posted, however, showed that the date that the sample had been taken was not today, when Zelenskiy was visiting Eurolab, but three days ago.
The social media users quickly noticed the mistake, and Zelenskiy’s accounts updated the posts with new documents with the date of April 5. No explanation for the change was provided.
Soon after that Eurolab’s Facebook account published a post apologizing to Zelenskiy and saying that it was a typo.
“Please take into account the employee’s nervousness,” Eurolab’s post reads.
