Yulia Tymoshenko, the leading presidential candidate and ex-prime minister, offered several of her competitors in the presidential race to join forces after the March 2019 election. Tymoshenko heads the Batkivshchyna Party that holds 20 seats in the Ukrainian parliament and is in opposition to the ruling coalition of President Petro Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front Party. Speaking in Lviv on Nov. 2, she named three candidates and prospective candidates she said she wanted to work with: Lviv Mayor and Samopomich party leader Andriy Sadoviy, ex-Defense Minister Anatoly Grytsenko, and rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, who is considering whether to run.
Vakarchuk and Grytsenko didn’t react to the offer, while Sadoviy brushed it off as a meaningless PR move.
All three are seen as democratic, pro-Western candidates and, unlike the veteran politician Tymoshenko, relatively new. They have been polling relatively well, too.
In the latest poll, published by Rating Group Ukraine sociological research NGO on Nov. 1, Grytsenko had 7 percent of support, Vakarchuk had 4.9 percent, and Sadoviy had 2.5 percent. Together, they had around the same number of supporters as Tymoshenko, who led the poll with the 13.4 percent of the votes. President Petro Poroshenko polled at 7 percent.
Two of the candidates Tymoshenko named, Grytsenko and Sadoviy, were long negotiating an alliance and a joint bid at the election.
But in early October, Sadoviy announced he was running separately and talks of their union died. Meanwhile, Vakarchuk, who has been flirting with politics, is evasive about his possible bid for the presidency, neither denying nor confirming it. In this landscape, Tymoshenko’s offer made a wave but so far only found negative response among its recipients.
“Tymoshenko’s logic is simple,” Sadoviy said in a statement posted on Facebook. “When in Lviv, say something good about Mayor Sadovyi that Lviv residents vote for, and praise Vakarchuk who’s very popular and loved here as a singer and a public figure. There’s no sincerity (in her words).”
Tymoshenko said she believed all pro-Ukrainian democratic forces must join forces with her and her party. “We want to create a strong national team with the right strategy. So that people would see and feel the change and return to Ukraine,” Tymoshenko said, referring to the brain drain from Ukraine.
At least 1.3 million Ukrainians left the country to work abroad in 2015-2017, the State Statistics Service of Ukraine has reported.
“If people start to come back, that would be the best result of our joint work,” Tymoshenko said.
Sadoviy was skeptical about it. “Mrs. Tymoshenko, people indeed want real change but not the return of the old schemes,” he said. Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kyiv-based political commentator and consultant, agrees Tymoshenko isn’t looking for a real union, but wants to earn “a couple of extra points.” “It was a hint to them to drop their candidacies (and join her),” Fesenko told the Kyiv Post. “But neither Grytsenko with his good rating, nor Vakarchuk will go for it.” “The real negotiations will start after the first round of the election, and will take place behind the closed doors,” he added.
