Poroshenko adopts Zelenskiy themes in runoff campaign

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said his top
priority is to take further steps “to significantly strengthen peace” and return
war prisoners to Ukraine as part of his latest campaign promises ahead of the
presidential runoff vote. “Key things will be changed,” he told the Ukrayina
television network in an interview broadcast on Apr. 7. “The team will be
changed, there will be a large number of young people. Currently, I have a
large number of proposals that we are analyzing and will be presented.” They
include a “significant enhancement of the state’s defense,” as well as “a
sharply accelerated movement towards the EU,” he said. The president said he
plans to propose signing a Membership Action Plan with NATO in December.

Regarding his weak first-round elections results,
Poroshenko said “this is a very strong stimulus for me to analyze all the five
years of governing with all the mistakes that were made,” adding that “I very
well absorbed this lesson for the next five years.” The second-round
presidential elections runoff vote is scheduled for Apr. 21.

In an Apr. 6 meeting with NGO leaders and civic
activists, President Poroshenko called upon the need to reset the National
Agency for Corruption Prevention and the Specialized Anti-Corruption
Prosecutor’s Office, the pravda.com.ua news site reported, citing
Anti-Corruption Action Centre Daria Kaleniuk, who attending the meeting.
Poroshenko said he supports Artem Sytnyk remaining as head of the National
Anti-Corruption Bureau, but has had concerns about the bureau’s work.
Poroshenko also called for removing the economic investigations authority from
the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and other law-enforcement bodies and
creating a new financial investigations service. He also promised to dismiss
Serhiy Semochko as deputy head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, who was
accused of corruption by the bihus.info investigative network.

Zenon Zawada: With his
latest promises, Poroshenko is trying to adopt some of Zelenskiy’s positions by
mimicking his themes (“peace” in Donbas, youth in government, accelerated
reforms). This is an elementary political mistake. Rather than trying to poorly
imitate his rival (who has already secured the electorate that cares most about
these issues), the president should be more strongly arguing the issues that he
is most closely associated with (resisting Russian aggression, EU-NATO
integration, higher social payments) and bringing more undecided voters to his
side. If he tries to sit on both sides of the fence, he will certainly lose the
runoff.

As for his willingness to change his corrupt
tendencies, Poroshenko’s recent actions place that under doubt. Besides failing to ensure that the suspects in the Russian military
parts scandal would be arrested until their
trial (the event of which is also doubtful), Poroshenko appointed on Apr. 5 a
controversial figure to deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Most recently, Vladyslav Kosynskiy served as the head of the Sumy regional
administration of the SBU having been appointed by the president in February
2017. A year later, several deputies of the regional council sent an appeal to
the president requesting Kosynskiy’s dismissal owing to his becoming entangled
in political intrigues and covering for criminal schemes in the region.

On the other hand, a positive sign is a resignation
letter written by Kherson regional administration head Andriy Hordeyev, who is
widely suspected of having played a role in the acid attack and murder of local
activist Kateryna Handziuk. After the first-round vote, Ukraine’s NGO community
asked Poroshenko to take more actions to prosecute Handziuk’s murder.
Poroshenko spoke with Hordeyev on Apr. 6, after which the regional head
submitted his letter and will be officially dismissed in 7-8 days, the
pravda.com.ua news site reported. Hordeyev hasn’t been named a suspect yet and
his prosecution is nonetheless doubtful, in our view.