The former head of the Yanukovych administration is already preparing to return to power with his “Opposition Bloc”
London - Kyiv, October 27 (PolitNavigator, Vasily Ablyazimov) - The “opposition bloc” has become a serious challenge for the government of billionaire President Petro Poroshenko in the parliamentary elections on Sunday, says the Daily Beast. The publication's journalists spoke with the founder of the block, Sergei Lyovochkin.
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Sergei Lyovochkin was known locally even before the start of this campaign. He served as the chief of staff of the ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. But Lyovochkin now says he despised his boss at least since a year ago, when the Maidan revolution demanded an end to old patterns of corruption and deepening ties with Europe.
Lyovochkin created the party with other heavyweights of former government officials and businessmen, including Ukraine's richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, and billionaire Dmitry Firtash. Both Akhmetov and Firtash own large companies in the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
“Opposition” billionaires position themselves as the resistance to a political clan led by Ukrainian tycoon Igor Kolomoisky, the governor of the Dnepropetrovsk region, who has financed several mercenary battalions fighting pro-Russian rebels in the eastern regions.
“The task at the moment is not to take control of parliament,” says Lyovochkin in an interview with the publication, “but to get into it.”
“Kolomoisky intends to falsify the election results with the help of his militants who guarded more than a dozen polling stations in the Donetsk, Lugansk and Dnepropetrovsk regions this weekend,” claims the former head of President Yanukovych’s administration. “We demand that Kolomoisky be fired and punished.” As evidence, he refers to a recording of a telephone conversation where Kolomoisky allegedly discussed criminal fraud in the elections.
“It may sound corny, but I want justice and balance for Ukraine,” says Lyovochkin. "I want my country to be successful." He insists that the current leadership, led by President “Willy Wonka,” is to blame for the national chaos and civil conflict that has become, in essence, a war between Kiev and Moscow.
Sitting in an easy chair in a spacious office in the Parus skyscraper in Kiev, opposition billionaire Lyovochkin blamed his sworn enemy among other billionaires, the powerful Igor Kolomoisky, for the blood, ruin and thousands of lost lives in eastern Ukraine.
Lyovochkin is confident that his Opposition Bloc will enter parliament after Sunday’s vote. He is "more than ready" to take on one of the country's leading positions, but admits it will be some time before that becomes possible. “I was at the very top of the old chain of command that just recently collapsed,” he says. “I need time until the dust settles and people see the true colors of the current leadership.”
Note from Politnavigator: Sergei Lyovochkin’s partner is Dmitry Firtash, one of the main sponsors of the UDAR party, which is part of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. In addition, Lyovochkin is accused of the agreed deliberate dispersal of students on November 30, 2013 on the Maidan, after which the conflict entered an acute phase.
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