We want to transform Ukraine

Photo courtesy of the College of Europe in Natolin

The question was what part this victory should I take credit for and what capacity do I see myself taking in the future. It was clear that the most useful capacity for me was as a communicator. A member of parliament seems like a natural continuation; and being as young as I am, I could not expect to be elected for other positions, so I chose to run as a member of parliament from Zelenskyy’s party.

To clarify your motivation…

My initial reasons to support Zelenskyy were caused by Petro Poroshenko’s misuse of power. Poroshenko abused the power he was given by the Maidan, and it was clear to me he was going to be defeated. So I was looking for someone who could defeat him. When Zelenskyy announced on January 1st that he was going to run, I was curious. I wanted to know what were his views and qualities besides the entertainment industry, and I found someone who was very clear, very determined and very structured. So I was looking for a way to become a member of the team. I went through friends in show business and managed to connect with Zelenskyy.

So did you meet him personally when you were working for his campaign?

Not at first, but I met him later during the presidential campaign and many times since. When I joined in February, the first person who vetted me was Ivan Bakanov, the chief of the campaign, who is now the chairman of the security services, or SBU. I told him my goals, the ways I could contribute to the campaign and voila; the day passed, and I was in.

Were there many people like you working on the campaign, or were professional campaigners the majority?

Two-thirds of those working for the campaign were like me or people from Zelenskyy’s entourage. And one-third of the people were integrated with Ukrainian political structures, and who could advise on how to do things.

And who were the people deciding on the campaign strategy?

The head of the campaign was Bakanov, so the final decisions belonged to him. But there were also people like Nikita Poturaiev, who essentially advised based on their vast experience.

Who was deciding things like slogans, statements, ads? Who was running the campaign’s social media?

Slogans and that sort of thing – there is no shortage of creativity among the people working with Zelenskyy, so there were always a lot of suggestions. The social media campaign was managed by Mykhailo Fedorov, who is now the deputy prime minister. He had a team working with him.

And what was your field of work?

Three things. First, civil society. I was trying to connect and build bridges, to explain who Zelenskyy was and what was his agenda. Second was international contacts; and third was advising on the campaign in Galicia (western Ukraine) – my home region.

So do you credit yourself with Zelenskyy’s result in the western regions of Ukraine?

My advice wasn’t always listened to. For example, the advice about relations with the church. The key to all the public issues in Galicia is the Greek Catholic church. It doesn’t require you to bow to the church, but if you meet a priest and have a photo taken with him it detoxifies your image. So I advised our team to open relations with the church.

But the campaign managers decided against that?

Yes. They listened to other pieces of advice but not that one. There were separate campaign offices in Galicia (Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Ternopil), so I was not solely responsible for that area. My primary efforts were in Kyiv. I was trying to explain Zelenskyy’s agenda to civil society.

Do you think you were successful?

Yes. We were able to bust the myths and challenge strong public opposition against Zelenskyy. My idea was to bring together representatives of civil society and have them meet with Zelenskyy in person. It didn’t work out that way, but I managed to bring people one by one, including those from NGOs and from Plast (Ukrainian scouting organisation), and introduce them.

I had an impression that Plast members went with Sviatoslav Vakarchuk in the end...

In the parliamentary elections, yes. In the presidential elections, many supported Zelenskyy. But I was working, first and foremost, on the detoxification of his image in those circles, because their dislike of Zelenskyy was not based on the reasons they gave, but because of aesthetic reasons. They all despised Kvartal (Zelenskyy’s show and entertainment company – editor’s note). They were all accustomed to western-style late night comedy and for them KVN style was repulsive so we had to work on that (KVN – is a Russian and former Soviet comedy competition show. Zelenskyy’s career in show business started and was defined by his participation in KVN – editor’s note).

Did you consider any other potential presidential candidates prior to joining Zelenskyy’s campaign?

I did. I had been thinking about those elections for a very long time. Two years prior to the elections I thought Sviatoslav Vakarchuk was going to run and win the elections. So I was trying to motivate people to support him, but he decided not to run.

Did you have any criteria to assess potential candidates?

I was looking for someone who could win – someone who would not compromise on broader issues and someone who was for the free market.

You were not ready to accept Poroshenko as president for a second term. Why?

I despised Petro Poroshenko. I met him at the Maidan. I thought that he was a petty tyrant (samodur) seeing himself as the all-knowing centre of the universe. So I was never a fan. During the 2014 presidential elections, I wasn’t able to vote. I registered to vote in Donetsk, where I was based at the time, but the elections in Donetsk did not take place. But he was elected with a clear majority so I thought we had to give him a chance. The moment when I became an outspoken critic of him was the time of the change of prime minister and the way it was handled. I was never a fan of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, but the way he was displaced under the cover of oligarchs made me see that Poroshenko is everything he pretends not to be.

Despite that, the new president and your political party decided to keep Arsen Avakov as the minister of interior after the parliamentary elections. He was appointed by Poroshenko…

Avakov is corrupt, but in reality Avakov and Poroshenko are the worst of enemies. Avakov was the reason Poroshenko couldn’t rig the elections. I also met Avakov at the Maidan and later in Kharkiv in 2014. The reason why Kharkiv was stabilised so quickly in 2014 was thanks to Avakov. Not only thanks to law enforcement, but to the deals he made with the local elite. The loss of Kharkiv could have been much worse than the loss of Donetsk.

When was it decided that you would become an MP candidate? Did you approach the campaign managers declaring your wish to become a candidate, or did they approach you?

It just became clear from a certain point – after my media involvement during the campaign.

And how were other potential MPs from the Servant of the People selected?

They were recruited from different sources – those who were working for the campaign, local leaders and public figures and those recommended by people working for the campaign. There were factors such as experience, personal appeal and one’s chances of winning in a particular district. People who were working for the campaign went through an additional vetting process to see if they were team players and if they could contribute as MPs.

Could you give reasons why people like Zhan Belenyuk (an Olympic medallist and world champion in Greco-Roman wrestling) were added to the party list? Was he prepared to be an MP?

Let’s define our terms. What is a member of parliament? Should this person be an academic who would be juggling the terms or should it be a communicator? In my view, this person should be a communicator who connects the experts with the public. Belenyuk, being an international sport celebrity and the first African Ukrainian to be elected an MP, is in a unique situation. Not to mention the fact that Ukrainian sport is a huge subject. So Belenyuk is perfectly entitled to be an MP.

But how are you going to select experts to communicate with? Experts can have their own beliefs and agendas.

You should have many of them and see them in action competing with each other, and then see their biases in action. If you remember the campaign videos, there were many people sitting around and debating issues. That was a small part of what was taking place. The role of the MP is to be sitting in the middle of the debate and decide which arguments are strongest.

Regarding the activities of your party in parliament, there have been controversial decisions. There were reports that only some MPs from the Servant of the People are authorised to talk to the press, and the majority are not.

This is a myth. It is just that some people, like myself, feel more at ease talking to the press, or are better experts in some specific area, and there are people who are more confident in practical work. And, moreover, not all contact with the media is time worthy.

Your party colleagues have decided to suspend opposition MP, Iryna Herashchenko, for five days recently. This was a controversial move.

Ms. Herashchenko called us “Russian green men” and there is a law on the books that states that an MP who offends other MPs can be suspended for some period of time.

It looks like a silencing of the opposition. The decision to suspend was taken by the committee on the rules of procedure where the chairman’s seat and the majority of seats are held by the Servant of the People MPs.

I have been on committee meetings with Ms Herashchenko. She uses every opportunity to make a statement and to talk for an enormous length of time on every issue in order to obstruct any work. That’s her job, to stall the process. The point is that Herashchenko is not a victim, but an obstructive politician, who does everything possible to obstruct the process, which she has a right to do. But the story is not about her, but about the rules and following the law in parliament. They accuse us of not following the law, which is untrue. And if occasionally they do not like us following the law, they create all this drama.

Can you tell me more about your party’s political agenda? What do you want to achieve in the next two or three years with your majority in parliament?

Broadly speaking, we want Ukraine to feel like a completely different place after we have completed our five year term. What it means is deregulation and the rule of law.

But could you be more specific? Deregulation to what extent?

Basically, we want to do an audit of the government structures, and dispose of features that do not have any useful functions. In that sense, we are libertarians.

Yet, it doesn’t seem that your party has a detailed plan of action thus far. Different ministers sometimes make contradictory statements…

We are having a public discussion on the direction of change and the statements indicate the process of discussion. But since we have a majority in parliament, we can speak about the future with confidence because we can shape it, and we do not have to compromise with the oligarchs or the opposition.

There seems to be a political consensus of oligarchs who support Zelenskyy’s presidency.

Some oligarchs decided not to work against us after the first round of the presidential elections, but it wasn’t like that from the outset and the campaign was not dependent on the oligarchs.

Zelenskyy and the Servant of the People had support of the major TV channel in Ukraine, 1+1, which belongs to Ihor Kolomoyskyi.

1+1 TV was helpful. That’s true. But that was just one of the factors of our success.

Sviatoslav Yurash is a deputy of the Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada for the Servant of the People party. At age 23, he is the youngest member of parliament. He is the son of Andriy Yurash – a Ukrainian official who was heavily involved in Petro Poroshenko’s efforts to gain Autocephaly for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Kateryna Pryshchepa is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Political Studies (Polish Academy of Sciences) and a project officer at the College of Europe Natolin Campus.

Servant of the People, Ukraine, Zelenskyy