On the side of the road to Kiev’s main airport, Gennady Korban slipped out of his black Mercedes to unveil a new campaign poster for the Dill party. The billboard featured a hand dragging from the earth the head of Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president who fled to Russia after the Maidan revolution last year.

“We need to create Mossad-style special operative groups to enter Russia and kidnap Yanukovych and his associates, and bring them back to face trial,” said Korban, a businessman, who is barely 5ft and speaks in whispers, usually while puffing on a cigarette. The party has another campaign it wants to launch this week, promising to hang corrupt officials, though an aide admitted it “may not be legal”.

Election fever is omnipresent in Ukraine this week as the country gears up for local polls on Sunday. Kiev and other cities are plastered with political billboards and engulfed in lively political debate. Korban is one of a field of candidates standing for mayor of the capital, where the incumbent, Vitaly Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxer, is expected to win.

There is no doubt that these elections are hotly contested, a year and a half after Maidan’s demands for more inclusive politics triumphed. Look a bit closer though, and the outburst of healthy competitive democracy may not be all it seems. The stakes are high, but observers say much of the same dirty tricks and cynicism for which the country’s political system has been known over the past two decades has not gone away.

These local elections, a year and a half after Petro Poroshenko won a presidential election, are being fought mainly on national issues rather than municipal fare such as potholes or nurseries. They are both a referendum on Poroshenko’s rule and a jostle for power and influence among the oligarchic and business clans that still dominate Ukraine.

Korban said Poroshenko was “leading the country into the abyss”, and the Dill party promises nationalisation and deoligarchisation in a future Ukraine. This is all well and good: critics of Poroshenko say he has indeed made too little progress on tackling the country’s oligarchs and their influence over politics. The only problem is Korban’s own biography. Forbes has estimated his fortune, which he admits he made from “raiding” companies in the 1990s, to be around $150m (£97m).

He is a long-time business associate of Igor Kolomoisky, a billionaire who was removed from his position as governor of Dnipropetrovsk this year and whom many see as the most troubling oligarch of all.



Igor Kolomoisky, the former governor of Dnipropetrovsk. Photograph: Mykhaylo Markiv/EPA

The Dill party got its name because ukrop, the Russian word for dill, was used as a derogatory term by pro-Russia separatists to refer to Ukrainian forces in the conflict in the east of the country, and now the term has been reclaimed by the Ukrainians themselves. “We are true patriots … and we have earned a moral right to refer to ourselves as dill,” said Korban.

Kolomoisky funded many of the volunteer battalions who led the fight against Russia-backed separatists last year, providing weapons and equipment and turning the tide in Dnipropetrovsk. Korban, who was Kolomoisky’s deputy in the city, admits they used “non-traditional” methods to defeat the separatists.

Critics say their goals for the election are less than transparent. “Of course their main goal is to protect their business and financial interests,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst.

While there is no doubt that Kolomoisky played a role in combating separatism in the east, many are sceptical about his new party. “You can wrap it in patriotic wrapping paper but it’s basically all about money,” said Victoria Voytsitska, an MP with the Samopomich party.

Korban is unlikely to win in Kiev, but the Dill party has more chance in Dnipropetrovsk, Kolomoysky’s power base. There it is fighting against a candidate from the Opposition Bloc, the remnants of Yanukovych’s former party. The race is expected to go into a second round and to be extremely close – and not necessarily fair. “All the old tricks are in play there now, and we can expect it to be very strongly contested, with even a possibility of violence,” said Fesenko.

In the complex and fractured Ukrainian political and business landscape, there are a number of different battles in different regions: allies in some areas can be bitterest enemies in others. Poroshenko’s ally Klitschko is expected to win in Kiev, but elsewhere the governing coalition may struggle.

The former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was jailed under Yanukovych and was widely seen as a spent force when released at the height of Maidan protests, has made a surprise recovery, running a campaign focused on gas tariffs, and is expected to do modestly well.

Elsewhere, all manner of dirty tricks have been employed. The Reform Movement has plastered Kiev in its advertisements, which inexplicably feature a rhinoceros wearing a blue T-shirt, but nobody really knows who they are, what they stand for, and who funds them.



Parties have been registered with names similar to established parties to confuse voters, while old tactics of voter buying are still being used in hotly contested areas. “Whereas before people simply handed out cash, now there have been instances of people giving out electronic cards which can be spent in certain shops – you get half the money first, and if the candidate wins they will put the other half on the card,” Fesenko said.

The results of these elections will provide for a cabinet reshuffle and, some hope, maybe even early parliamentary elections. Whether the fight is mainly about political principles or power and influence remains an open question.



Korban gave a withering evaluation of Poroshenko and his time in charge: “The political elite has not really changed in Ukraine, this is just one part of the old elite, who got into power by jumping on the back of protesters. They are not capable of carrying out real reforms.”

A high-ranking official gave an equally withering assessment of Korban and his partner Kolomoisky: “He wants to change the president, it’s as simple as that. All of this political activity is about putting on pressure and trying to win back influence.”

The real worry for Ukrainians is that both sides could be right.

