Ihor Kolomoisky. Anti-Russian oligarch. The Ukrainian billionaire is a parallel power centre in the war-torn country

G. Sampath

ILLUSTRATION: SREEJITH R KUMAR

Like almost every post-Soviet state that sought to make a quick transition to a market economy, Ukraine, too, went through a period of economic free-for-all when, in the name of privatisation, government assets were bought up in a fire sale by a small group of men with ties to the government. Although comparable to the billionaires of the West in terms of their political influence and financial heft, the tycoons of the former Soviet republics are typically branded as ‘oligarchs’ — a moniker that strips them of the presumed virtues of entrepreneurship while attributing their wealth primarily, if not solely, to rapacious plunder of state resources.

While President Vladimir Putin has the Russian oligarchs on a tight leash, the power of Ukraine’s oligarchs may appear to rival that of the state itself — a scenario complicated by the fact that Ukrainian oligarchs tend to be either pro-Russia or pro-West, depending on their business interests and patronage networks.

For instance, Ukraine’s most powerful oligarch, the 59-year-old Ihor Kolomoisky, is pro-Europe and virulently anti-Russia, while Viktor Medvedchuk is seen as a pro-Russia oligarch. In recent years, both pro-West and pro-Russia oligarchs have aligned with pro-West and pro-Russia politicians, respectively. Mr. Kolomoisky’s career exemplifies this divide at the heart of the Ukrainian polity— a divide that both preceded, and according to some, precipitated an increasingly dire confrontation with Russia.

Born in 1963 in the Soviet Ukraine, Mr. Kolomoisky graduated with a degree in metallurgy in 1985, a qualification that served him well in the mad scramble to capture Ukraine’s heavy industries. After he took control of Privat Bank, Ukraine’s largest bank, he set himself up as the country’s leading financier. It later emerged that Mr. Kolomoisky had been siphoning off bank funds through sham investments in the U.S. He is now under probe by the FBI on money-laundering charges, and is banned from entering the U.S.

Indeed, what distinguishes Mr. Kolomoisky from the other oligarchs is not the scale of his financial misdemeanours, which are impressive in themselves, but the ubiquity of his fingerprints in his country’s pivotal political moments. When Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, Ukraine barely had 6,000 combat-ready troops, and could not mount a defence. But the same month, as pro-Russia separatists began to take over government buildings in the east, the acting Ukrainian President appointed Mr. Kolomoisky as Governor of Dnipropetrovsk province.

Fighting separatists

As Governor, Mr. Kolomoisky, dipping into his own wealth, raised a 2,000-strong private militia within months and took the fight to the separatists. Apart from funding private militias such as the Dnipro Battalion and the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion — both accused of human rights violations and lauded for resisting the Russian forces — Mr. Kolomoisky has also had success in shaping public opinion through the media platforms that he owns. The comedy show that made Volodymyr Zelensky a household name and propelled him to the presidency, Servant of the People, was produced by Mr. Kolomoisky’s company.

In a twist of double irony, Mr. Zelensky, widely seen as ‘Kolomoisky’s candidate’, and supported by the latter’s media platforms, ran for President on the back of two promises: to cleanse Ukraine of oligarch-driven corruption, and end the war in eastern Ukraine. After he became President, Mr. Zelensky, on the one hand, used his anti-corruption crusade to selectively go after pro-Russian oligarchs such as Mr. Medvedchuk, while on the other, his bid to negotiate peace in eastern Ukraine flew in the face of the Kolomoisky-funded militias’ visceral hatred of the pro-Russia separatists. And as the war continued, with rising civilian casualties, Moscow began to speak of ‘genocide’ in the Donbas, further aggravating relations between the neighbours.

Mr. Kolomoisky, who has a shark tank in his office, and is known to unnerve visitors by feeding the sharks in their presence, has been a parallel power centre in the Ukrainian polity. His involvement in money-laundering, funding of private militias, backing of Euromaidan protests, and later, of Mr. Zelensky, his hatred of Russia, and of Mr. Putin specifically, are all part of the matrix of variables that have had an undeniable role in nudging Ukraine towards instability, if not the war-torn tragedy of the present.