Ukraine’s Central Election Commission on June 23 rejected the application of exiled ex-official Andriy Klyuyev, who tried to register as a candidate in the July 21 parliamentary elections.
Klyuyev used to serve in top positions under then-President Viktor Yanukovych in 2010-2014. He was the deputy prime minister, served as head of the Defense and Security Council, and ran Yanukovych’s administration during the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted the pro-Russia president in 2014.
Klyuyev fled the country in February 2014 with his boss. He has been residing in Russia ever since.
Nevertheless, the ex-official filed an application to register as a candidate in the upcoming parliamentary elections in absentia. But the Central Election Commission ruled that Klyuyev didn’t meet the requirement that the candidate should reside in Ukraine for five years before the election.
However, Klyuyev still has a chance to run.
On June 22, in a similar case, a court obligated the Central Election Commission to register fugitive lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko as a candidate in the upcoming elections. Onyshchenko, who fled Ukraine in 2016 to escape embezzlement charges, was also rejected by the Central Election Commission because he didn’t live in Ukraine for five years prior to the election.
The court sided with Onyshchenko, who claimed he was abroad to participate in equestrian sport competitions.
Klyuyev has five days to appeal the Central Election Commission’s decision in court, according to Oleksandr Ostapa, the commission’s spokesman.
The former official wants to run for parliament in the 46th single-member constituency situated in Donetsk Oblast. He was nominated by the Liberal Party of Ukraine, a little-known party which received 0.05 percent of the vote in the previous parliamentary elections.
According to election watchdog Opora, the Liberal Party of Ukraine’s defense of Andriy Klyuyev was structured around the fact that he allegedly resided for five years in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, situated 675 kilometers east of Kyiv. Donetsk has been controlled by Russia-backed militants since the summer of 2014.
Klyuyev’s choice of district isn’t surprising. The current representative of this single-member constituency in parliament is his brother, Serhiy Klyuyev.
The Klyuyev brothers were among the top Yanukovych allies. Serhiy Klyuyev, who was a businessman and lawmaker from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, was the nominal owner of Yanukovych’s lavish secret residence, Mezhyhirya. After Yanukovych fled the country, the residence was turned into a park and opened to the public.
Following the fall of Yanukovych in 2014, the European Union placed sanctions on both brothers, along with other key players in Yanukovych’s regime. However, with Ukraine failing to follow up on the investigation, the EU removed the Klyuyev brothers from its sanctions lists.
Although Serhiy Klyuyev is nominally still a member of parliament, he fled the country in 2015, after authorities charged him with embezzlement. He has reportedly been living in Austria.
