The wife of a Ukrainian banker takes no chances with her children. “I only let the kids out to go to school, otherwise I keep them close to home,” she said. Her husband has been caught up in an abruptly reopened corruption case in the run-up to Ukraine’s presidential election.
Voting in the first round takes place on March 31, and some Ukraine-watchers have dubbed the election the filthiest in living memory. That’s saying something for a country notorious for dirty politics, unabashed graft, and the systematic plundering of the state by Viktor Yanukovych before the Maidan uprising drove him from power in 2014.
We are sitting in the family kitchen a short walk from Kiev’s Independence Square where five years ago sniper rounds started crackling to launch the bloodiest day in what had been a monthslong struggle to oust Vladimir Putin’s satrap, Yanukovych.
As we examine court documents spread out on the table in her Kiev apartment, she tells me her husband has fled the country because state prosecutors are trying to get him to testify falsely against a former business partner to seize a multimillion-dollar property in downtown Kiev.
“I’m scared something could happen to the kids. They might be used as a provocation to try to force their father to return to Ukraine.” She asked me not to identify her; fearing publicity is more dangerous than protective.
Five years after Yanukovych slid off to exile in Russia, Ukraine is still struggling to break with the past and to become what people here like to call a “normal state.” Russian aggression, its wrecking tactics in the east of Ukraine where the Kremlin continues the conflict over the Donbass region, hasn’t helped.
But the bad habits of the past continue to plague Ukraine, sabotaging progress and undermining the objectives of the Maidan’s “revolution for dignity.” Ukraine desperately needs a new generation of politicians to emerge, one uninfected with the old corrupt political gene.
The election campaign, which features an absurd total of 44 candidates, has been mired in dirty tricks and a bewildering round of charges and countercharges of corruption. Almost everyone seems to be under investigation. Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, an ally of incumbent Petro Poroshenko, who’s seeking reelection, hasn’t hesitated to launch criminal probes into rival candidates and their staffers.
In some cases, closed corruption cases have been dusted off and reopened, despite breaching double-jeopardy rules. And open intimidation of investigative journalists is once again the order of the day. Reporters from independent outlets complain they’ve been placed under surveillance and are getting stalked. One of the outlets, Nashi Groshi, noticed an uptick in monitoring on the eve of publishing a report detailing allegations about business friends of Poroshenko enriching themselves with shadowy defense contracts.
Surveillance and stalking may seem innocuous in the grand scheme of things, something robust journalists should be able to shrug off, but the tactic is meant to send a warning, and not only to the investigative journalists themselves but also the people they’re trying to persuade to divulge information.
There’s little enthusiasm for the election among ordinary Ukrainians, who’ve lost faith in politicians. Some say they will vote for Poroshenko, despite their fury with him for not doing enough to stamp out endemic high-level graft, but will do so holding their noses. Their biggest fear is that a defeat for the oligarch-politician will mark a revanchist turn-away from European integration and lead the country to be sucked back into the Russian orbit.
Some place hope in the surprise outsider in the race, television comic Vladimir Zelenskiy, a thin-framed 41-year-old who’s trying to turn art into life. He’s the star of the popular TV series “Servant of the People,” in which he plays a high school teacher who ends up becoming Ukraine’s president as a result of a YouTube rant against the country’s corrupt elite.
He’s now the front-runner, according to opinion polls, with ordinary Ukrainians thrilling to his comic routines mocking Poroshenko, much as Italians dissatisfied with “real” politicians applauded the robust takedowns of the elite by comedian Beppe Grillo, founder of the Five Star Movement, which is now the senior partner in a populist Italian coalition government.
Jamie Dettmer is an international correspondent and broadcaster for VOA.
