Klitschko, Filatov win biggest mayoral runoffs in Ukraine, exit polls say

Ukraine held its mayoral runoff elections on Nov. 15 in 29 cities, with voter turnout not exceeding 34 percent, the Opora election monitoring organization reported, based on its exit polls. As expected, Vitali Klitschko of the Solidary Petro Poroshenko Bloc won re-election in Kyiv, the capital and Ukraine’s largest city, while Andriy Sadovyi of the Self-Reliance party won re-election in Lviv, Ukraine’s seventh-largest city.

In Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, Borys Filatov of the Ukrop party was elected mayor with 53.8 percent, according to Opora. Backed by industrial magnate Igor Kolomoisky, he defeated Oleksandr Vilkul, who earned 46.2 percent and was backed by industrial magnate Rinat Akhmetov. Yet the Donetsk billionaire gained a key victory in Ukraine’s sixth largest-city Zaporizhia, where residents elected Volodymyr Buriak of Zaporizhstal, a steel plant controlled by Akhmetov. The Donetsk magnate also gained a victory in Pavlohrad, where his candidate, Anatoliy Vershyna, won control of a key coal mining city.

Zenon Zawada: The runoff elections were held with the ordinary amount of reported fraud but minimal violence, which serves as a great credit to the residents of eastern Ukraine, where the most intense contests were held. Indeed Buriak’s opponent, Mykola Frolov, reported that his campaign head was beaten and hospitalized early last week. But it did not get worse than that, even on Election Day. As for the fraud, among the most alarming cases was a report by the Interior Ministry alleging 10,000 votes were bought in Dnipropetrovsk through the Internet, with financing based in Moscow.

Klitschko’s victory will enhance Poroshenko’s chain of command throughout Ukraine’s government. But it won’t help Poroshenko when the protests start erupting next year. Meanwhile, Filatov’s victory in Dnipropetrovsk secures a key urban center for Kolomoisky, who is continuing to battle with his rival billionaires, Poroshenko and Akhmetov. It’s these three magnates who are the biggest power brokers in Ukraine.