A bloc of small pro-Russian parties that united last week revealed the top 10 candidates on its party list for the parliamentary elections scheduled for July 21.
Currently unnamed, the bloc includes the Opposition Bloc, the Party of Peace, Nashi (Ours), Vidrodzhennya (Revival), and the Doviryai Dilam (Trust in Deeds) party.
Three of these parties were included in a recent public opinion poll published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. Among them, the Opposition Bloc — formerly the leading pro-Russian party in the Verkhovna Rada — was the most popular, garnering 0.9-percent support among decided voters. The Nashi party received 0.7-percent support and the Vidrodzhennia party got 0.6 percent.
The Party of Peace and Doviryai Dilam party were not included in the poll and most likely have less than 0.5-percent support each.
The top 1o politicians on the unified bloc’s list are:
- Vadym Novynskyi – a Ukrainian lawmaker and former member of ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s defunct Party of the Regions. Born in Russia, Novynsky received Ukrainian citizenship from Yanukovych in 2012. Together with oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, Novynskyi owns Metinvest Holding, a group of steel and mining companies.
- Yevhen Murayev – a member of parliament and leader of the Nashi party. Murayev is a former member of the Party of Regions who owns the Nash (Our) television channel.
- Oleksandr Vilkul – a member of parliament formerly on the list of the Party of Regions. Previously, Vilkul served as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (2010-2012) and deputy prime minister of Ukraine (2012-2014).
- Hennadiy Kernes – the mayor of Kharkiv, the second largest Ukrainian city with a population of 1.4 million, located 480 kilometers to the east of Kyiv.
- Gennadiy Trukhanov – the mayor of Odesa, Ukraine’s Black Sea metropolis of roughly one million inhabitants located 470 kilometers to the south of Kyiv. On June 2, Trukhanov and Kernes united their two parties to form Doviryai Dilam.
- Vadym Boychenko – the mayor of Mariupol, a port and industrial city with a population of 446,000 inhabitants located on the shores of the Azov Sea, roughly 830 kilometers to the southeast of Kyiv. In 2010-2015, Boychenko worked in businesses owned by Novynskyi.
- Volodymyr Buryak – the mayor of Zaporizhia, an industrial city of 750,000 inhabitants located 560 kilometers to the southeast of Kyiv. Buryak worked for 28 years at Zaporizhstal, one of Ukraine’s largest metallurgical plants, which is currently owned by Novynskyi.
- Ulyana Tkachenko – a deputy in the Khmelnitsky Oblast Council, who used to work in the Epicentr-K wholesale network, which is owned by the Gerega Family. In 2012-2015, Tkachenko was the personal assistant of Oleksandr Gerega, a member of parliament formerly in the Party of Regions faction.
- Volodymyr Pylypenko – a former member of parliament specializing in judicial issues.
- Bohdan Andriyiv – the mayor of Uzhhorod, a city of 112,000 inhabitants in Zakarpattia Oblast, roughly 810 kilometers to the southwest of Kyiv. Andriyiv used to be a member of the Party of Regions.
The unified bloc supports the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine’s east through direct talks with the occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The party’s campaign agenda also includes decentralization, economic growth, multiethnic tolerance, and stopping many current reforms.
Ukrainian parties must receive 5 percent of the vote to enter the parliament through party lists. However, only half of the Rada’s 450 seats are awarded through party lists. The other 250 lawmakers are elected through single-mandate districts, meaning that parties can get their members into the Rada that way.
