Vitali Klitchko, the city mayor of Kyiv at his office in Kyiv, Ukraine on Jan. 18.Anton Skyba /The Globe and Mail
His country is at war, and he knows everyone is supposed to rally behind the flag and the President. But Vitaly Klitschko says he also has a responsibility to speak out about what he sees as Ukraine’s drift away from the democratic principles it’s supposed to be fighting for.
In the eyes of the mayor of Kyiv, his country is heading in the wrong direction, becoming increasingly autocratic. For the past 23 months, Ukraine’s main television channels have broadcast a single program, United News Telemarathon, that Mr. Klitschko says allows little space for dissenting voices – while journalists critical of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration have come under pressure. Mr. Klitschko says more than 200 mayors and local council heads around the country have been replaced with military administrators since the Russian invasion began in February, 2022.
Both measures were adopted under the martial law Mr. Zelensky declared in response to the attack. But Mr. Klitschko worries that the freedoms and reforms Ukrainians fought for over the course of two pro-Western revolutions earlier this century are being undone.
“The movement, what we see right now, I can’t say it’s democracy. It smells of the vertical and of authoritarianism,” Mr. Klitschko told The Globe and Mail in an interview inside his city’s administration building. “Behind this is the wish of some people – I can’t say their names – but they wish everything to be centralized, and that’s why I see centralized media and TV in Ukraine, and they also try to centralize the power, to build a vertical.”
He says it bothers him because he’s seen it before – in Russia, where almost nothing remains of opposition parties or media critical of President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Klitschko intentionally refers to the creation of a “power vertical” in Ukraine – the same term Mr. Putin uses to describe the top-down system he presides over from the Kremlin.
“The mayors and the heads of community are elected by citizens, and they are being instead replaced by people who are put in from the top. So that’s why I worry,” he said. “If I see mistakes and don’t speak about them, that means to be agreed – and I’m not.”
Mr. Klitschko, a former world boxing champion, said he has shared his concerns in conversations with Western ambassadors based in Kyiv. Asked whether some of those diplomats shared his fears, he replied: “Yes.”
The mayor first spoke out about the rising authoritarianism in Ukraine last month in an interview with Swiss media. His comments to The Globe on Thursday followed a pair of incidents that raised new concerns about press freedom in the country.
On Sunday, investigative journalist Yuriy Nikolov – an outspoken critic of Mr. Zelensky – said unknown men had come to his apartment, banged on the door and demanded that he join the army. In a video posted online by a Telegram channel considered pro-Zelensky, a handwritten sign that reads “traitor” is stuck to Mr. Nikolov’s door.
Two days later, another video – apparently made using hidden cameras – that seemed to show employees of the Bihus.info website taking illegal drugs was posted online. Denys Bihus, the director of the website, which gained prominence by exposing corruption in the military, later said his staff had been under surveillance for at least a year, calling it “systematic, long-term surveillance and harassment to discredit the team’s work.”
After statements of concern this week from organizations such as Transparency International Ukraine, Mr. c said Wednesday that the country’s SBU security service had been assigned to investigate the cases. “Any pressure on journalists is unacceptable,” he said in his nightly video address.
Mr. Klitschko welcomed Mr. Zelensky’s intervention. “The reaction of the President, of Zelensky, was very important. This is good that Zelensky pays attention to this question, because we are worried that some government institutions were involved in that repression of free media.”
Asked if he had ever been denied the opportunity to present his point of view on United News Telemarathon, Mr. Klitschko paused and bit his lip for 17 seconds before giving an indirect answer. “We see the real movement to present just one information that they try and control. Objective, true information is very important to society, and a monopoly on information I guess is not good.”
As a result of the TV program – which emphasizes Ukrainian military successes while downplaying setbacks – Mr. Klitschko said “a big part of the society doesn’t understand exactly what happens at the frontline” and thus doesn’t understand the military’s recent request for 500,000 new recruits to hold off the fresh Russian offensive that is grinding forward in the east and south of the country.
Mr. Zelensky’s office did not immediately reply to a Globe request for a response to Mr. Klitschko’s comments.
Petro Burkovskyy, the executive director of the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Kyiv-based think tank, said Mr. Klitschko’s criticisms of the administration are a sign that competitive politics has returned to Ukraine after a long pause, during which the country’s political elite appeared to put their rivalries on hold to face the invasion.
Mr. Burkovskyy said he believed Mr. Klitschko’s criticisms were motivated by the fact he had been cut out of decision-making by Mr. Zelensky and his team.
A December poll conducted by Mr. Burkovskyy’s group and the Razumkov Centre, another Kyiv-based think tank, found that Mr. Zelensky was still the country’s top-rated politician, with 71 per cent of respondents saying they trusted the President. His only serious rivals in terms of public trust were Vitaly Kim, the popular governor who last year rallied the defence of his southern Mykolaiv region, and philanthropist Serhiy Prytula, whose foundation has been one of the biggest fundraisers and donors of equipment for frontline fighters.
Mr. Klitschko – who, like Mr. Zelensky, remained steadfastly in his office as the Russians approached the outskirts of Kyiv in the spring of 2022 – was well down the list of trusted politicians, with 40 per cent of respondents saying they trusted him and 45 per cent saying they did not.
Despite his concerns about the drift away from democracy, Mr. Klitschko said he agreed with Mr. Zelensky that it would be impossible to hold elections, which were scheduled for this year, while the country is at war and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are fighting on the frontline. Millions more are living outside the country as refugees.
Mr. Klitschko said his decision to sound the alarm about the country’s political direction was intended to be constructive rather than an attack.
“Please take the criticism as help, to show you where you can be better and fix the problems. Criticism is not an aggressive activity, it’s help not to do mistakes,” he said when asked whether his comments might divide the country in wartime. “It’s very, very important never to forget what we’re fighting for. We want to be part of the democratic, European family. To be part of the democratic world.”