While the first of two spots in an almost certain runoff next month looks wrapped up, a battle for the other is raging between incumbent Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Accusations are flying — everything from voter payoffs to wiretaps and shady donors. There’s even a decoy candidate among the field of 39 hopefuls.
Dirty tricks aren’t unique to Ukraine. They’re a common occurrence in ex-communist Europe and continue to fuel heated discussions over issues like Brexit. But Ukraine’s history of revolutions — it’s already had two this century — makes it different. Just ask Viktor Yanukovych, whose fraudulent election victory in 2004 was overturned by mass protesters. Having prevailed six years later, another popular uprising sent him fleeing to Russia in 2014.
“If voters lose trust in the declared winner, this could spiral into street actions and violence,” said Orysia Lutsevych, a research fellow at Chatham House in London.
Much of the jostling before initial voting on March 31 — where TV comedian and political novice Volodymyr Zelenskiy leads polls — is playing out through law-enforcement agencies.
The Interior Ministry, which is considered more friendly toward Tymoshenko, has opened probes into voter payoffs in favor of the president, saying thousands of people are being given about $40 each, often from state and local budgets. In turn, the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, seen as loyal to Poroshenko, is investigating Tymoshenko’s party over similar activities.
Tymoshenko says her rival is trying to “buy the election” and is using the SBU as his campaign headquarters. Poroshenko, who vehemently denies wrongdoing and has raised pensions in the runup to voting, calls all his opponents agents of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, labeling the election a contest between him and the Kremlin.
It’s not just over voter bribery that law-enforcement bodies are clashing. The Interior Ministry says it found SBU listening devices near the offices of Zelenskiy, who’s also favorite to win the April 21 runoff. The SBU says the bugs were part of a separate operation.
Zelenskiy himself faces accusations he’s a stooge of billionaire Ihor Kolomoiskyi, whose TV channel airs the comedian’s shows. He denies the two are working together on his run for president.
Other tycoons are frequently listed as behind-the-scenes backers of his opponents. A report this week said Tymoshenko’s campaign received more than $5 million from a fugitive lawmaker, with large amounts disguised as donations from, among others, a supermarket cashier in a tiny village.
“The amount of political advertising has increased dramatically and far exceeds parties’ budgets,” said Oleksandr Sushko, executive director of the Renaissance Foundation, which promotes democracy and transparency. “Some explanations of where money is coming from are laughable.”
In one of the more bizarre developments, Tymoshenko — who denies campaign-financing irregularities — is facing opposition at the ballot box from a candidate called Yuriy Tymoshenko, whose initials and surname will look identical to hers on voting papers. Prosecutors have detained two people trying to hand the candidate 5 million hryvnia ($183,000) to pull out.
“We see already now that this is the dirtiest and the most shameful election campaign ever,” said Oleksandr Biletskyi, who leads a party made up largely of veterans of the conflict with Russia in the country’s east.