A new political party called Warriors of the ATO announced on Jan. 31 that Colonel Serhiy Kryvonos, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s special forces, will be its candidate in the upcoming presidential elections on March 31.
Kryvonos has been in the Ukrainian military for 30 years, and won the respect of many current and former soldiers for his role as commander of the forces that defended Kramatorsk Airport from May 24, to July 5, 2014 when it was besieged by Russian-led forces.
For more than two weeks during that time, the outnumbered Ukrainian forces were cut off from supplies and reinforcements, and had hardly any water.
Despite that, they fought off the enemy attacks and the siege was lifted. Kryvonos was credited with outstanding leadership, with his men suffering only five wounded, while the Russian-led forces lost at least 70 killed and 150 wounded.
He was awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine, and later that year President Petro Poroshenko supported his appointment as deputy commander of Ukraine’s special forces.
Kryvonos’s candidacy was announced at a conference convened for that purpose at the Veterans’ Building in Kyiv by a hitherto unknown party called Vojiny ATO (Warriors of the Anti-Terror Operation) which was registered some time ago but had remained dormant until now.
Kryvonos told the Kyiv Post that he was permitted under Ministry of Defense regulations to take part in the election and would be allowed to return to his post if he did not win – something he acknowledged was likely.
“I know my chances aren’t very big,” he told the Kyiv Post. “But I will look to those people who stood shoulder to shoulder with me in 2014 and 2015, those who fought and those, such as the volunteers, who helped us to fight. They are the most nationally-conscious layers of our population – people who defended or helped to defend Ukraine then, and who continue to do so now.”
Kryvonos said he would be traveling around the country to speak at rallies organized by former comrades in arms, many of whom have signed up to help in his campaign.
“I believe there are many people who want to see new faces in politics in our country and are willing to offer the money and resources I need to take my message to a wider audience,” he said.
Rallying around
Although Kryvonos is a newcomer to politics, some political veterans have already rallied around him. One of those is Anatoliy Pinchuk, a political operative and commentator who has long advocated support for small- and mid-sized businesses, and battled against corruption, prominently in Ukraine’s state-owned military-industrial holding company, UkrOboronProm.
Pinchuk, a founder member of the Vojiny ATO Party, said: “We regard the other presidential candidates who are promising to get a swift peace agreement with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin as dishonest or willing to surrender to him. Putin will never compromise, he wants Ukraine on her knees.”
He says that, in contrast to rival parties floating the idea of ending the conflict, the new party makes clear it believes a continuing conflict is unavoidable and that Ukraine can only secure an independent future by defeating Russia.
Pinchuk said that polls show a substantial number of voters intend to vote for former Defense Minister Anatoliy Grytsenko, attracted by his military background. However, Pinchuk said, Grytsenko never saw action in his career and avoided the present conflict – despite being offered the chance to lead volunteer battalions during the critical 2014-2015 period. Kryvonos, in contrast, excelled on the battlefield.”
He thinks many of those who might have voted for Anatoliy Grytsenko will switch to Kryvonos, who could also gain many of the protest votes supporting TV comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy. That, believes Pinchuk, could give Kryvonos the momentum to make it into the run-off round of the election.
Ukraine’s presidential election is likely to be held over two rounds: If no candidate gains more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round on March 31, the top two candidates qualify for a runoff second round vote on April 21.
Position of strength
The message in Kryvonos’s manifesto is stark: “An aggressor is conducting a war, whose aim is not just about territorial claims, but the utter destruction of Ukraine’s independence and political existence.”
He said the key to the successful defense of Kramatorsk Airport was seizing the initiative, and Ukraine should be pro-active so as to keep the far larger Russian forces, and their proxies, off balance.
“We asked absolutely nobody whether we could shoot, we took the initiative and that way curbed the enemy’s ability to take the initiative. We never waited for the enemy to hit us first and instead, wherever we had the opportunity, we hit them first,” said Kryvonos.
“There will be no peace without a Ukrainian victory,” he added. “Our position as to achieving victory and then peace is that any agreement must be done from a position of strength on our part, in order to make it impossible for the Russian Federation to attack Ukraine.
“We cannot get on our knees and plead for peace [with Russia] as that would be to throw away the gains we have made in the years of independence and to spit on the memory of those who have died for the independence of our nation. Either we defeat the aggressor and compel him to withdraw from Ukrainian territory or Ukraine will be ruined.”
Historical figures
Kryvonos said he did not have any political ambitions before the mass pro-democracy protests in the fall of 2013 and early 2014, which eventually led to the ouster of Ukraine’s deeply corrupt and pro-Moscow president at that time, Viktor Yanukovych.
But despite not being interested in taking part in politics, Kryvonos said he’s always been interested in reading history – and particularly in those in the past who served their countries both as soldiers and then in high political office.
“I’ve studied closely people like Britain’s prime minister during World War II, Winston Churchill, who started as a hussar (cavalryman) in the British military, and France’s Charles De Gaulle and Chile’s [Augusto] Pinochet. These people made significant contributions to their countries – positive or sometimes negative – but they influenced events in their country and set it in a certain direction.”
His favorite author is the late U.S. writer, Ernest Hemingway, himself at times a war journalist, some of whose best-known books are set during conflicts. While visiting the United States for training, Kryvonos said he took time off for a pilgrimage to Hemingway’s home state of Montana.
Paper warriors
Kryvonos said one of the main factors that prompted him to enter politics was that residual Soviet-era deskbound “paper warrior” bureaucrats were hampering the development of Ukraine’s military.
“In 2014 we started to create an entirely new type of army, and we had large numbers of very motivated volunteers who fought and had an appetite for the introduction of modern methods to bring us into line with NATO standards.
“But our military-bureaucratic system, which was formed far earlier, in Soviet times, started to come back to the fore and stifle, choke and squeeze out the patriots and motivated people who tried to change things for the better.”
He said so many of the army’s brightest and most motivated soldiers were abandoning the armed forces that “if we wait another couple of years, then the army will be filled with wage-earners without much patriotism.”
“So I decided to go into politics, because if I couldn’t change the military from the inside then I have the right to try to change it from the outside.”
He says the priority of any Ukrainian president has to be to build up the country’s military capacity, both conventional and in the form of an extensive covert guerrilla network that could work in independent groups should Russia launch a large-scale invasion.
“Ukraine can’t win in an all-out war against Russia, where it would be massively outnumbered,” Kryvonos said. “We have to make them understand that they can invade, but they won’t be able to control the majority, or even modest patches of our territory – and they will suffer losses that far outweigh any of their gains.”
Strong middle class
He said that another of his key priorities is to fight corruption. It is clear that he has been influenced by his visits, on military business, to the United States and Canada. He said he had spoken to police and bureaucrats there and asked them if they would take bribes. They replied that they were paid well enough that it would be foolish to endanger their jobs by taking backhanders.
“Unlike in Ukraine, where the corrupt don’t even bother to hide their crimes, in the West there are consequences when people are caught,” he said. “We have to make crime lead to consequences here.”
Kryvonos has especial contempt for politicians and bureaucrats profiting corruptly from war, saying “you have to simply destroy those types.”
“Ending corruption will take many years and requires the removal of many people. So one of the ways to reduce levels of corruption is to make it difficult, by introducing transparent procedures, and another way is to eliminate the (temptation) by raising salaries to levels that allow people to live normally.”
He believes a strong middle class would provide the foundations for transparency and honesty at all levels of government and society, and says he would support measures to help the small- and mid-sized businesses from which such a class emerges.
One way to do so, he said, would be “to introduce a simplified, easily understood tax system that would give people, especially young people, involved in business startups, an opportunity to flourish.”
Defense effort
Despite his limited chances of winning the presidency, Kryvonos said he hopes the publicity he receives will allow him to hammer home his message that if Ukraine is to survive, it has to involve the entire country in the defense effort, which also embraces other security structures such as the SBU intelligence service, the National Guard, and the border guards.
“My main message is that all – all – the people of this country must work together in the defense of their independence. It’s very important to inject new blood, new opinions, new thinking, new approaches into the leading echelons of government and community.
“A war is not a problem solely for the military. Not everyone needs to be taking part with an automatic rifle in their hands, but they have to be involved at some level. War is a matter that should involve the nation, and all the nation’s citizens.”
