Voice party elects Rudyk as new head, replacing Vakarchuk

The Voice party elected software engineer and MP Kira
Rudyk as its new head at its Mar. 12 congress, its founder Sviatoslav Vakarchuk
announced on Facebook that day. Rudyk served as CEO in Ring Ukraine, a software
development firm that was bought by Amazon for USD 1 bln in 2018. Meanwhile,
Vakarchuk said he will remain an MP and will be involved as a “political
provider,” instead of serving as party head.

“Today, we stand before a very serious challenge: the
government, under the guise of new faces, is truly bringing back old ones. With
our example, we are demonstrating the opposite: we are bringing to leadership
positions, both in the party and parliament, new professional people. That’s
precisely why today, the Voice party congress selected the best administrator
from our team, Kira Rudyk, as the new party head. Kira personifies modernity,
and she is bringing this modernity to the party’s work, together with invaluable
experience in administering large teams. And I, as the leader, will continue to
rebuild the party,” Vakarchuk wrote on his Facebook page.

A pro-Russian political operative, Andriy Portnov, alleged
on his Facebook page on Mar. 9 that Vakarchuk evaded tax payments on income
gained from his rock concerts in recent years, having transferred his payments,
using foreign-registered intermediaries, to offshore bank accounts. He gained
some of this revenue from performing for Russian oligarchs in Europe, Portnov
alleged. In response, Vakarchuk told a Mar. 12 television talk show that
Portnov is engaging in “informational terrorism” with his allegations. Portnov
is a lawyer who continues to represent the interests of former president
Yanukovuch and his entourage.

Zenon Zawada: The
neoliberal Voice party is the single major force that hasn’t enjoyed a ratings
bump and gained from the declining support for the pro-presidential People’s
Servant party in recent polls. That speaks to a failure in party leadership,
particularly on Vakarchuk’s part. He hasn’t been very visible in the media
since joining parliament in September, and hasn’t led any major political
initiatives, besides the party proposing to freeze the conflict in Donbas,
which isn’t a popular proposal among the public.

Considering Vakarchuk passed up a chance to formidably
compete in the presidential election (which would have put a firmly pro-Western
politician in the presidency), we see this downgrade as part of an overall
pattern of his lacking political ambition and motivation. His political
capital, and that of his party, is slowly and gradually deteriorating.

As a result, Ukraine lacks a strong and popular
pro-Western political party that enjoys the public’s confidence and can lead
unified, mass protests against president Zelensky’s campaign for rapprochement
with Russia. Any protests that will occur will involve a piecemeal collection
of diverse activist groups. The situation is quite similar to the run up to
2013 Euromaidan.