Could Poroshenko effectively oppose Kolomoisky? We will discuss this in more detail later, but for now, let’s consider the power system of those times. Ukraine in 2014-2019 was still a country with a high level of corruption. However, the scale of state budget embezzlements during Poroshenko’s time was much smaller than under the previous president, Yanukovych, who after his flight to Russia left the country with virtually an empty budget.
Before the 2019 elections, Petro Poroshenko’s opponents accused him of failing to eradicate corruption. Moreover, the president’s associates, Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovskyi, were suspected of being involved in scams in the energy sector and embezzlements at the chemical Odesa Port Plant.
Indeed, this plant had always been a cash cow for any president without exception, from Kuchma to Zelensky. Since the Odesa Port Plant was state-owned, its managers, in agreement with Kyiv, regularly concocted various cunning schemes, as a result of which the plant earned minimal profit, and the commercial partner – the maximum. Every president, having this huge generator of black cash, stubbornly did not want to privatize the Odesa Port Plant. It remains state-owned to this day. And as you can understand, if the OPP brings in revenues, they definitely do not go to the state budget.
Interestingly, after the change of power, the Office of President Zelensky and the officials subordinate to him from the Prosecutor General’s Office, the State Bureau of Investigations, and the SBU have not been able to find any criminal activity on Poroshenko. Despite the obvious fact that Zelensky hates his predecessor, no corruption was found in his actions. But for Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and journalists, it was enough that Poroshenko couldn’t or didn’t want to make Ukraine free from corruption. It all ended with the absolute majority of corruption fighters deciding to make an infantile protest in the spirit of an offended 16-year-old schoolboy. Ignoring the professional qualities of presidential candidates, they voted for an incompetent populist associated with Ukraine’s most dangerous oligarch.
Poroshenko did not eradicate corruption for two reasons. Firstly, he did not have enough MPs to change legislation. Secondly, he did not have a strong desire to do so. Like every president before and after him, instead of destroying the judicial mafia, it was much more convenient for Poroshenko to manually negotiate this or that court decision. While he held the presidency, most judges heeded the advice of his Administration officials. And Poroshenko was satisfied with this.
The fundamental basis of Ukrainian corruption is the impunity of judges, which allows them to issue unlawful judicial decisions in favor of interested parties. This problem can only be solved by changing the Constitution. It turned out that the judicial branch of power in Ukraine is incapable of self-purification through control by the High Council of Justice. Fighting corruption in the judiciary is only possible by abolishing judges’ immunity and holding them criminally responsible for issuing illegal decisions. For this, the president or other initiators of constitutional change need to have not just a majority (226 MPs) in parliament, but a constitutional majority (300 MPs).
The parliamentary majority, which theoretically should have supported Poroshenko’s reforms, was a shaky construction created from the pro-presidential party “Petro Poroshenko Block” (132 MPs) and the “People’s Front” party (82 MPs).
Other factions that joined the coalition at the beginning of the work of the 8th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada (2014 – 2019) left it after a year and a half. First, the faction of the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko fell off, then “Batkivshchyna” of Yulia Tymoshenko and “Self Reliance” of Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi. Since 2016, the pro-presidential coalition had the minimum number of deputies. During important votes, parliamentary votes had to be bought periodically. Such are the realities of Ukrainian politics.
For example, in December 2016, the coalition lacked votes to pass the budget for the next year. The faction of the Radical Party, which had already left the coalition by that time, kindly agreed to support this vote. However, it turned out that for this, the head of the faction, Oleh Lyashko, requested the inclusion in the budget of an allocation of 600 million hryvnias (about $25 million) for the purchase of fire trucks at the “Pozhmashina” factory in Chernihiv region. This factory belonged to the head of the local branch of the Radical Party. Two years earlier, Lyashko had already lobbied for the purchase of fire trucks at the same enterprise, but then the amount was three times less – only 200 million hryvnias. Similar lobbying schemes worked with other factions and individual MPs.
Like Zelensky, the leader of the Radical Party, Oleh Lyashko, was a populist, easily giving voters the most diverse promises. An interesting fact from his biography: in the early 90s, Lyashko was convicted of fraud. He spent several years in prison and was released under the 1996 amnesty on the occasion of the adoption of the Constitution and the 5th anniversary of Ukraine’s Independence.
The difference between Lyashko and Zelensky was felt in the scale of the electoral base. If Zelensky managed to unite around himself maximally wide layers of the population from almost all regions of the country, then Lyashko mainly focused on poorly educated rural voters of the Central part of Ukraine. As a result, the more powerful populist project “Servant of the People” by Zelensky absorbed the electorate of the Radical Party. In the snap elections of 2019, Oleh Lyashko’s party did not overcome the 5-percent barrier to enter parliament.
Due to the constant lack of deputies to adopt the necessary bills, the “People’s Front” faction received a golden share. Almost everything depended on the position of its leadership: Oleksandr Turchynov (Chairman of the Security Council, acting President in 2014), Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Prime Minister 2014-2016), and Arsen Avakov (Minister of Internal Affairs 2014-2021). Poroshenko had serious problems with the latter, especially towards the end of his five-year presidential term.
Avakov almost openly worked against Poroshenko and coordinated his actions with Kolomoisky. For example, in the winter of 2019, during the election campaign, the police, led by Avakov, covered groups of “activists” from the “National Militia” (the civilian division of “Azov”), who traveled from city to city committing hooligan actions at meetings involving the president.
The reason for the conflict between Avakov and Poroshenko dates back to 2015 when the minister’s son was accused of corruption. In February 2015, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, headed by Arsen Avakov, decided to order 5,000 backpacks from his son’s company at prices significantly higher than market ones. This classic corruption scheme could have gone unnoticed, but after some time, Ukrainian media published a video made by a hidden camera, where the younger Avakov in the office of his father’s deputy, Serhiy Chebotar, discussed the details of the backpack purchase.
After the video made noise on social networks, a criminal case was initiated against Olexandr Avakov, and his property was seized. But after a three-year investigation, the case ended in nothing and did not even reach the court. The seizure of the minister’s son’s property was lifted, and he continued to live a normal life, not spending a single night in a detention center. Nonetheless, Avakov Sr. blamed President Poroshenko for his son’s problems. In his opinion, Poroshenko could have stopped the case at the very beginning but did not want to do so. Arsen Avakov remained in office but harbored a great grudge against the president.
Perhaps the most eloquent description of Poroshenko’s political weakness is the fact that he could not fire Avakov from the position of head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, although he theoretically had such an opportunity. Considering that Avakov was one of the leaders of the People’s Front, this would automatically destroy the coalition. After early elections, the prime minister could become a person much less loyal to the president than Yatsenyuk.
And the last stroke to the portrait of Avakov and his role in this whole story. After Zelensky’s victory, Kolomoisky was in euphoria for some time, so he willingly gave frank interviews. In one of them, the scandalous oligarch stated that “Zelensky is our common victory with Avakov.”