35-year-old Razumkov to be nominated as Rada speaker

Dmytro Razumkov, a
35-year-old political insider, told reporters on Aug. 3 that he will be
nominated by The People’s Servant party, loyal to President Volodymyr Zelensky,
to serve as the new head of parliament (speaker). Razumkov was among Zelensky’s
closest advisers during his upstart presidential campaign and was head of The
People’s Servant during its parliamentary campaign. The son of one of Ukraine’s
leading political scientists (Oleksandr Razumkov), Dmytro Razumkov had been a
member of the Russian-oriented Party of Regions before spending 2010-2014 working
for Serhiy Tihipko, an oligarch who served as social policy minister between
2010 and 2012 for the Yanukovych administration (overthrown by the EuroMaidan).
Tihipko served as deputy head of the Party of Regions between March 2012 and
April 2014, when it collapsed following the EuroMaidan protests.

The People’s Servant
will nominate as first deputy head Ruslan Stefanchuk, a 43-year-old lawyer who
spent most of his career as an academician, Razumkov also told reporters. The
main candidate for the party’s parliamentary faction head is the 40-year-old
David Arakhamia (Braun), the pravda.com.ua news site reported on Aug. 3,
citing an anonymous source in the party. Several days earlier, Arakhamiya told
the news site that he doubts he’ll become faction head. Arakhamiya is an IT
entrepreneur who became among the leaders of Ukraine’s volunteer organizations
offering support for the Anti-Terrorist Operation forces in Donbas. Zelensky
appointed Arakhamiya as secretary of the National Investment Council on June
21. The pro-NATO advocate Bohdan Yaremenko, 47 years old, will be nominated as
head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, while the 29-year-old
Maria Mezentseva, who had lobbied Ukrainian interests in the European
Parliament, will be nominated as head of the parliamentary Euro-integration
committee, the pravda.com.ua news site said.

Zenon Zawada: We expect The People’s Servant
party will form the coalition government by itself (having 254 mandates, in
excess of the 226 needed). We expect this coalition will elect as the
parliament’s speaker Razumkov, who is positioning himself as a consolidating
figure for society, oscillating between use of the Russian and Ukrainian languages
(similar to Zelensky) and casting himself as a pro-Western politician despite
his past ties to Ukraine’s Russian-oriented forces. In this sense, Razumkov
fits perfectly into the Zelensky administration’s plan as positioning itself as
the bridge between Ukraine’s Russophile residents (mostly in the urban
southeast cities) and Euro-Atlantic integration.

We expect Razumkov will be a successful speaker, particularly since he
will have a single political force offering its full support, with two very vocal
opposition forces (pro-Russian led by Yuriy Boyko and pro-Western led by former
President Poroshenko) that will be ultimately limited in its authority. We
expect heavy political attacks from the European Solidarity (led by Poroshenko)
and nationalist forces at even the slightest sign of compromise or concessions
to the Russians, which Poroshenko had begun to do. They are certain to hammer
on the fact that two top officials in the Zelensky team – Presidential Office
Head Andriy Biohdan and Dmytro Razumkov – have ties to the Yanukovych
administration.