KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s interior minister has accused the incumbent president and a former premier of waging campaigns that involve bribing voters ahead of Sunday’s presidential election.
In a statement issued late Thursday, Arsen Avakov said that his ministry is looking into hundreds of claims that campaigners for President Petro Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko were offering money to voters who would promise to cast a ballot for their candidate.
He noted that about 60 percent of complaints about bribes refer to Poroshenko’s campaign, while Tymoshenko’s campaign accounts for the rest. Both campaigns have repeatedly denied the accusations.
Opinion polls show Poroshenko and Tymoshenko trailing comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who stars in a TV series about a teacher who becomes president after a video of him denouncing corruption goes viral. A runoff is likely as none of the candidates is expected to win an absolute majority in Sunday’s vote.
Speaking at a campaign rally late Thursday, Poroshenko sought to play down the wide gap between him and Zelenskiy, and accused self-exiled billionaire businessman Ihor Kolomoyskyi of trying to prevent his re-election by supporting both Zelenskiy and Tymoshenko in Sunday’s election.
“He has fled abroad, but he simultaneously moves two figures on the election chessboard,” Poroshenko said of Kolomoyskyi, who lives in Israel. Zelenskiy and Tymoshenko have rejected claims that Kolomoyskyi is the funder and mastermind of their campaigns.
In an interview released by the UNIAN news agency late Thursday, Kolomoyskyi blamed Poroshenko for the nation’s economic stagnation and expressed hope that he would lose the vote.
He denied funding any of the candidates, but hailed 41-year-old Zelenskiy as an upright and highly talented person capable of combating corruption and taking Ukraine out of its economic quagmire. “It’s time to give way to the young,” he said.
Many political observers have described Ukraine’s election campaign as a duel between Kolomoyskyi and Poroshenko, who was on Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires with a net worth of $1.3 billion in 2014 before dropping off the following year.
Avakov claimed neutrality, but he has heavily focused on alleged violations by Poroshenko’s campaign.
He said Thursday that the Interior Ministry was “showered” with claims of Poroshenko’s campaigners bribing voters complete with photos and videos, adding that investigation will take time.
