Despite Pyotr Poroshenko’s desire to enter the presidential election campaign in Ukraine with a winning rating (his official nomination took place last Tuesday) and his efforts to attract the attention of voters by his “uncompromised” fight against the Russian aggression, this rating, unfortunately for him, froze at 12%-13%. Which is almost two times below Yulia Timoshenko’s approval rating.
Overall, the majority of Ukrainian voters turned out to be no fools. Hence the new tactics of the chocolate magnate: the narrative of the campaign was adjusted according to the principle “the more ludicrous the message, the higher the rating.” (After all, you cannot offer a development program to your electoral base having sold the country for a mythical visa-free regime.) Also, already in the course of his nomination, Poroshenko declared that his main rival was no one other than Vladimir Putin.
This brings to mind the lines by Vladimir Mayakovsky, “…jealous of Copernicus, regarding him, not the neighbor's husband, as your true rival.”
Indeed, it’s hardly appropriate for the junta leader to be matched against the “comic” Vladimir Zelensky and the “witch” Timoshenko. (The weight class is totally different. It’s like comedian Yevgeny Petrosyan from Channel One [who has been popular since the Soviet times] competing against a new generation of stand-up comics from TNT TV). It’s quite a different thing to put yourself alongside the greater ones, sugarcoating your image in the eyes of undiscriminating provincial public. So I think it is quite likely that in the heat of pre-election passions – like the numerous candidates to the positions of Russian governors – Poroshenko, the Ukrainian comedian, would sink as low as to place a photo collage of himself with Vladimir Putin on roadside billboards.
However, there is a person in Ukraine whose approval ratings are running truly high. And this is the country’s ex president Viktor Yanukovich, who, were the election to take place today, would receive as much as 60% (!) of votes. That’s the place Poroshenko should strive to be.
Hence, by the way, the quick and well-timed attack on Yanukovich launched by the Ukrainian injustice system and the rushed, but trendy sentence: 13 years of imprisonment “for high treason and complicity in an aggressive war.” As soon as the sentence was announced, a PR event followed: a representative of Poroshenko’s junta, a certain Mr Yagun, made a public threat that the country’s special services could kidnap the runaway former president to ensure that he was subjected to the “fair” punishment.
Everything in this threat is beautiful. First of all, the person pounding his chest is no other but a member of the Ukrainian Security Council (USC), the organization, which after such special operations as the “attempt” at Babchenko’s life or the attack of the Ukrainian Navy on the Crimean Bridge, can be tasked only with herding cows in a field, from the fence and till the dawn. It is also amazing to see who has decided to judge and punish Yanukovich. These are not the representatives of Themis (where is Themis and where is today’s Ukraine?), but the real traitors of the independent country, hard-nosed criminals that have grown proficient at shifting their crimes on scapegoats appointed by quasi-prosecutors.
I believe that the bold statement made by the in-no-way-remarkable USC quasi-general is the product of the current situation when thugs that have seized power in Kiev get so immersed in their roles of “fighters for democracy” during their weekly “five minutes of hate” against Russia that they start seeing themselves in the vanguard of defenders of the “civilized” Europe against the “Moscow horde,” in reality proving their rural narrow-mindedness and conceit of Nazi slaves. Of course, the freaks from the USC are trying to emulate the image of the Israeli secret service, Mossad. But there was time when all secret services of the world considered it important to help Mossad, because its agents really searched for Nazi criminals abroad. But who is going to help the USC today, it being an assembly of Nazi and their collaborators?
I believe that there is a simple explanation for the new threat voiced by the former USC member: the trial of Yanukovich and the loud statements about it made by the “true Aryans” are what Poroshenko needs in the context of his election campaign. The leader of the Kiev junta and his accomplices are looking for a way to maintain the myth among voters about the war Russia is waging against Ukraine: hence the wording of Yanukovich’s sentence, which, I predict, will be repeated time and again in Poroshenko’s pre-election ads. Hence his desire to present Yanukovich and Putin as his rivals and the “bad guys” of the election, casting himself as the patriot of Ukraine and the great peacemaker.
Russians are mocking the “Either Poroshenko or Putin” slogan. This mockery is currently playing in Poroshenko’s favor, like a jacket tucked in one’s pants. It seems that to be favored in the Ukrainian election, you do not need to be liked by the marginal part of the electorate base, you need them to find you the funniest.
