Picking a fight with Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, The former heavyweight world boxing champion, is risky business. But this time, Klitschko might lose.
The mayor of Kyiv is in the middle of a power struggle with the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky. The administration wants to strip Klitschko — who endorsed Zelensky’s opponent, President Petro Poroshenko, in the presidential election this spring — of the essential part of his powers as mayor. Klitschko wants to keep them, and is fighting back.
There are two governing roles in Kyiv: the mayor, who is elected by people, and head of the Kyiv City State Administration, who is appointed by the president. Since 2014, Klitschko has been occupying both roles, giving him full control of the city.
But now Zelensky wants to fire Klitschko as the head of the city’s administration. That would take away a significant portion of Klitschko’s powers.
Klitschko says that it would be bad for the city and would be a return to the strong-arm methods of corrupt ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted by the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014.
“This would paralyze the city,” Klitschko said at a press conference on July 26, adding that appointing a person to rule the city without the consent of its residents is a foreign concept for European countries.
The mayor also hit back with his own accusations against the president and his administration.
Klitschko claimed that Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan, told him to coordinate his decisions with Bohdan’s associates, including a prominent real estate developer.
Both Bogdan an Zelensky’s spokeswoman Yulia Mendel did not respond to the Kyiv Post’s request for comment.
The power struggle between Klitschko and Zelensky is unfolding several days after Zelensky’s party won the parliamentary election in a landslide, securing control over parliament and the future government.
Klitschko’s two roles
Back in 1992, when democratic elections were a fairly new concept in Ukraine, then-President Leonid Kravchuk created a new post: the head of the Kyiv City State Administration. This official was directly appointed by the president and enjoyed vast powers, such as allocating budgetary funds and firing the administration’s staff at will.
This was possible because Kyiv has a special status in Ukraine, which makes it equal an oblast. The president has the right to appoint governors in oblasts, who are officially called the heads of the oblast state administrations. In Kyiv, the president has the same right.
However, since the first democratic election of a Kyiv mayor took place in 1999, an unwritten rule was established: the person who is elected as the city’s mayor is also appointed by the president to head the Kyiv City State Administration.
That all changed in 2010, when Yanukovych was elected president.
As with governors, the head of the Kyiv City State Administration must be appointed by every new president. Yanukovych decided to appoint his loyalist, Oleksandr Popov, as the head of the Kyiv administration instead of then-Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, who was highly unpopular among the city’s residents.
After Yanukovych fled to Russia in 2014, the newly elected President Petro Poroshenko honored tradition and appointed Klitschko as head of the Kyiv City State Administration after he was elected as mayor by the city’s residents in May 2014.
But the situation is about to change. Zelensky wants to appoint the head of the Kyiv City State Administration and Klitschko is not among the candidates.
Kyiv stand-off
On July 26, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said that, following Zelensky’s request, the Cabinet of Ministers would dismiss Klitschko as head of the Kyiv City State Administration during the government’s next session.
“It’s a standard practice according to the constitution when the heads of state administrations formally resign before the newly elected president (takes office),” said Groysman, adding that it’s then up to the president to appoint someone for the job.
It won’t be Klitschko.
During a July 1 interview with a RBC news website, Bogdan hinted that the administration plans to appoint someone else as the head of Kyiv administration.
Weeks later, Klitschko went on the offensive.
“Bohdan said that, from now on, I must coordinate my actions regarding how to govern the city with one of two people: (Andriy) Vavrysh or (Oleksandr) Tkachenko,” Klitschko said at a press conference on July 26.
He said that the meeting with Bogdan took place a couple of weeks prior to the date of his press-conference.
Vavrysh is Bogdan’s longtime friend and a well-known Kyiv developer who previously served as deputy director of Kyiv’s City Planning and Architecture Department. During that time, he signed off on documents allowing land to be used for residential development. Two weeks later, he was dismissed by Klitschko. Today, he is developing some of that land himself.
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In December 2014, Klitschko had Vavrysh temporarily suspended from his post and investigated for allegedly giving cover to unspecified corrupt practices.
Vavrysh is also a competitor of Vadym Stolar, a powerful developer close to Klitschko, who the media allege is the “gray cardinal” behind the mayor. Klitschko denies that Stolar influences him.
On July 21, Stolar was elected to parliament on the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life party list.
Tkachenko is the former head of 1+1 media, a television and radio broadcasting group owned by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, on which most of Zelensky’s television shows aired. The channel was also the leading platform for Zelensky during his presidential campaign.
Zelensky co-owns studio Kvartal 95, which produces shows for the 1+1 channel.
Klitschko also said that he and his brother had filed a lawsuit against 1+1 channel on charges of defamation.
The 1+1 channel released an investigative broadcast in June accusing the Klitschko brothers of corruption.
Political expert Volodymyr Fesenko thinks that Klitschko’s press conference was a good counter-offensive.
“By mentioning Vavrysh (together with Tkachenko), Klitschko is trying to show that there are business interests involved,” he said.
Fesenko confirmed that Tkachenko is among the most likely candidates to be appointed as the new head of the Kyiv CIty State Administration.
“It’s not because of Klitschko. Zelensky simply doesn’t like people associated with Poroshenko — all of them,” says Fesenko, adding that the president prefers someone he can trust.
During the 2014 presidential election, Klitschko supported Poroshenko, while his party joined the Petro Poroshenko Bloc during the parliamentary election later that year.
Capital anarchy
Fesenko says that the current stand-off resembles the situation when Yanukovych decided to appoint his loyalist Popov as head of the Kyiv City State Administration.
Back in 2010, then-mayor Chernovetsky refrained from picking a fight with Popov, instead choosing to resign the following year and voluntarily leaving the country.
Klitschko never backed down from a fight during his professional boxing career and, according to his recent comments, he isn’t planning to start.
“If they want to govern Kyiv, let’s call snap elections,” he said in early July.
However, Fesenko points out that, judging by the recent parliamentary election results where Zelensky’s Servant of the People party won all single-member districts in Kyiv, it is unlikely that Klitschko will win. Appointing Tkachenko as head of the Kyiv City State Administration will give him time to prepare for the elections, which — if not called early — will take place in late 2020.
“I expect a fierce fight,” Fesenko added.
