With the expectation of the end of the “hot phase” of the war and the approach of the elections in Ukraine, figures who previously disappeared from the political radar are beginning to appear on the information surface. Instead of new faces who could give the country a fresh vector of development, people whose reputation and past raise doubts and questions are trying to return to the forefront. One of such figures is the main sponsor of the Svoboda party, known by the nickname “Pups”, whom some in the media identify with the criminal authority and “brigadier” of the Lviv racketeer group, Kolya Rokero.
Now he is a respectable businessman with hundreds of legalized millions, Igor Kryvetsky. Not hiding his sympathy for the flair of gangster mystery, he is trying to “establish” the nationalist niche in information. But he is also trying to expand his influence on voters from the moderate-centrist environment with barely noticeable but persistent notes of “cottoniness”. It is precisely such people who will most likely vote for Vitali Klitschko in the upcoming elections, at the behest of his sponsors from the banned OPZH party.
In the early 2000s, the series “Brigade” became very popular in Russia and in post-Soviet countries, including ours, romanticizing the gangster order of the 90s, the easy way to money and power through crime and impunity. The main character Sasha Bely gradually tries to legalize himself in society, turning from a criminal authority into a “respectable person” and even a deputy of the State Duma. A kind of image of a “guy from the people” is formed, who, despite everything, could not throw off the burden of the past and dies after another criminal showdown.
A rather similar story, true or not, is associated with the man who took second place in the ranking of the most influential Lviv residents in 2019 - Ihor Kryvetsky. This is a person who in the operational reports of the 90s was called nothing other than "Pups", together with criminal authorities Volodymyr Didukh, better known as "Vova Morda" and Mykola Lozynsky - Kolya Rokero) terrorized business west of Zbruch, taking away tasty morsels of non-privatized real estate, land plots, abandoned and working industries, trade and brokerage businesses.
Secondly, Klitschko and Kryvetsky are also connected by “partners” who are usually considered pro-Russian. Namely, the group of Dmitry Firtash, in whose interests, according to one version, in 2012 “Svoboda” was allowed to overcome the passage barrier and become a parliamentary political force. Let’s not forget the joint business of Firtash and Kryvetsky’s mother in the capital’s elite business center, lobbying by “Svoboda” to block shale gas production in the interests of Firtash’s group, or support for the majority of favorable Party of Regions votes in parliament in 2012-2014. Even the records of “Svoboda” representatives receiving money from the “granary book” of the regionals can be left alone and handed over to historical researchers for trial. Just like the lease agreements under which Kryvetsky rented premises to the main office of Sberbank of Russia in the center of Lviv, when the attack on Donbas was already in full swing.
Today, Kryvetsky has a joint business with the defendants in criminal cases about the misuse of funds in the construction of the Podilsko-Voskresensky bridge (we are talking about Vyacheslav Eberle, whose companies participated in the schemes), closely cooperates with one of the “pillars” of the OPZZH and Klitschko’s “partners” in the capital’s “market” of illegal construction, Vadim Stolar. And the story about how Prosecutor General Makhnitsky did not submit a name from Firtash’s group for sanction to the Europeans for approval will remain etched in the annals for a long time.
Several quite reasonable questions arise. Are citizens ready to bring a person with a 90s mentality to power in the mid-2020s? Or is the time for such figures irrevocably over and any hints of possible opaque or unexplained incomes and schemes should be a no-go sign even for such people to approach politics?
What should be the reaction of society in the midst of a full-scale Kremlin invasion to the facts of direct cooperation of an allegedly “nationalist” businessman and politician with political forces and businessmen who are considered pro-Russian? How high should the threshold of tolerance be to allow, 12 years later, to step on the same rake when, under the guise of “nationalism,” a future support for a dictatorial regime was brought into parliament?
Are law enforcement, tax, and anti-corruption agencies ready to give an objective assessment of the origin of the former “brigadier’s” wealth and current lifestyle, as well as confirm the complete cleansing of his past from criminal traces? Or will references to “statutes of limitations” and “difficult times” again allow him to avoid responsibility? And finally, how ready are politicians who see their future in post-war Ukraine to financially associate themselves with a person who has shown in practice his attitude to values and principles, multiplying them repeatedly by zero?.
