Original article in Ukrainian by Mustafa Nayem, Kommersant, for UP
Translated by Yulia Yarotska, Nykolai Bilaniuk, Natalka Patsiurko and Ilya Khineyko for UKL
The American consultants of Victor Yanukovych have become some kind of mirage in a general picture, where the Party of Regions and its leaders are the main figures.
In public opinion, the “Regions” are sturdily associated with Russia, so they avoid any talks about cooperation with the Americans. In unofficial conversations, both opponents and supporters of the party willingly demonize both individual foreigners and their working methods.
Meanwhile, it is pretty easy to find the exact address of the representatives of the American company in Kyiv that worked for the Party of Regions during the past parliamentary election. Their office is located on the ground floor of the building on Sofiivs’ka Street 4, just across the last stop of trolleybuses ¹16 and 18 and across from the “GoldTelekom” office.
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| Office in Sofiivska Square |
All day the windows of the mysterious office are covered with blinds. In front of the building near the entrance, instead of the impressive plate, there is a blue plate “PAM Ukraine”. Nobody responds to numerous doorbell rings. In order to enter the office you need to wait until someone exits the building.
A usual office worker meets you at the entrance of the office. In order to enter the office you only need to tell him with a serious tone that Mr. Phillip Griffin is already waiting for you. Though, anyway, you will be stuck in a tiny entrance hall and will need to introduce yourself, as well as to indicate what the purpose of your visit is.
When they finally learn that you are a journalist, they will politely ask you to leave and not to disturb them any more. A pretty similar reaction will follow after you ask how to find Mr. Paul Manafort.
Yet, after long exhortations, the office manager finally agrees to call somebody who is authorized to talk to the press. While you are waiting, you have the chance to look around. In a little corridor there is an empty bookshelf, a chair and a table with messy piles of paper and folders on it.
There is a mini ATE (automatic telephone exchange) there as well. “Davis-Manafort” is written with red pen next to the forth button.
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| Connection to the US spin doctors |
Finally, the office manager comes back; a young man in a business suit and a tie follows him. Very politely, he explains to you that Mr. Griffin is out of the office at the moment – he went to the States for the weekend.
Again, for a long time you are persuading him to give you some details. During the course of the short conversation, you learn that only 6 to 8 people work in this office, and all of them are residents of Ukraine.
- We work exclusively with Mr. Manafort, though our formal director is Phillip Griffin, - the young man explains, - We do not have any relations with the Party of Regions at the moment. After the end of the [parliamentary] election campaign, Mr. Griffin is probably helping them personally, providing some services. But we do not have contacts with the Party anymore.
During our conversation, the young man mentions several times the “Davis-Manafort” company, probably meaning “Davis, Manafort” or “Davis, Manafort & Stone”. According to our informants, such a company is not registered in Ukraine, and thus has no official right to hire employees and to rent the office.
A young woman from the office at Sofiivska Street asked us to call back in ten days; she promised to pass to Mr. Griffin our request to meet with him and to comment on his work. Though when the determined time has passed, the American was still “outside the territory of Ukraine”. Ukrainska pravda’s official request still remains unanswered.
It should be mentioned that Mr. Paul Manafort and his colleagues have followed this line of behaviour for some time already. They keep hiding from cameras and microphones, and yet shake the hand of Rinat Akhmetov, the richest man of Ukraine. Mr. Akhmetov, in his turn, cordially calls them his “friends”.
Mr. Paul Manafort, who became a legend after two years of work in Ukraine, was last seen with the leader of the Party of Regions during Victor Pinchuk’s lunch in Davos.
Easily avoiding cameras, the American stated that he is not a “public personality” and does not give interviews.
Nevertheless, there is little doubt that he was the “eyes” and “ears” of Victor Yanukovych, not Rinat Akhmetov, at the most important international forum.
“Mr. Manafort does not provide any service to SCM [System Capital Management, Akhmetov’s company] and has never done so since he started to work with the Party of Regions,” – Rinat Akhmetov confessed in an interview to Ukrains’ka pravda.
However, the activity of Mr. Paul Manafort and his colleagues during the last two years makes us assume that their work for the Party of Regions is a part of a huge business project, directly or indirectly beneficial for the representatives of big Ukrainian business, and, first of all, is beneficial to Rinat Akhmetov himself.
1
A group of American political technologists appeared in Ukraine long before the parliamentary election campaign in 2006. According to our sources, in mid-2005, Rinat Akhmetov, being in exile, had a number of meetings with several American consultants, including Paul Manafort.
They mostly talked about providing some services to the SCM Holdings to prepare and place the company’s shares in Western stock markets. The version that from the very beginning the Americans were invited to serve the SCM has almost become official. Even Rinat Akhmetov sticks to it.
“In 2005, the SCM was facing the following task: we needed to develop a corporate communications strategy. To complete this task, the company invited several consultants, including Mr. Manafort. In addition, we also invited a group of consultants that included the worldclass company Burson-Marstellar and the European company MMD,” - Mr. Akhmetov told us during his interview with Ukrains’ka pravda.
Though some sources from within the Party of Regions insist that Paul Manafort first visited Donetsk at the beginning of December 2004 – between the second and third rounds of the presidential election.
“We only started to talk about the SCM at the beginning of 2005,” - tells us one of the leaders of Victor Yanukovych’s presidential election campaign. “From the very beginning Paul Manafort was invited to the election, to be precise, for the third round. But because there were only two weeks left, Paul stated that it was impossible to influence the campaign in any way.
According to Rinat Akhmetov, “one of the American law firms” advised him to use Paul Manafort’s services. But according to one of the theories, the American was backed up by Russian businessman Oleh Derypaska.
Mr. Manafort is linked to several companies that provide services of lobbying and political consultations. He is also a co-founder of “Davis, Manafort & Freeman, Inc.,”Davis, Manafort & Stone,” and “Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly”.
According to our sources, SCM Holdings signed a contract with “Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly”, which mainly specializes in economic lobbying.
In business circles the company is also known as an exclusive consultant of “Phillip Morris”. Mr. Manafort dealt with the Party of Regions in the name of the other company – “Davis, Manafort & Freeman, Inc.” Nevertheless, it is unknown whether this company signed any direct contract with the Party or only worked through its representatives.
Mr. Manafort and his partners gained popularity after their active participation in political campaigns in Third World countries in the first half of 1980s. The companies and the specialists that now work with Victor Yanukovych previously consulted the governments of Kenya, Somali, Angola (UNITA movement headed by Jonas Savimbi), Nigeria and Congo.
Mr. Manafort, the head of the consultation group of Victor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, is also believed to be the head of the successful campaign for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1981.
In order to conduct the campaign, Marcos, disturbed by the growing international isolation of the Philippines, revoked the military condition of the state and announced a general election. Later the election was called, by the Western press, “one of the dirtiest in the history of the Philippines.” “There was all-out knavery, the threatening of voters, the falsification of voters’ lists, and very questionable vote counting,”- the press wrote then.
Paul Manafort started his career in the team of America’s 38th President, the Republican Gerald Ford. Mr. Ford was known for being the only president in the history of the United States that became the head of the state as a result of a scandal, not an election. Occupying the position of Vice-President, in 1974 he solemnly entered the Oval Office after his predecessor Richard Nixon was forced to resign over the famous Watergate scandal.
After 1974, Mr. Manafort’s name could be found among the staff of almost all forthcoming Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan (1980, 1984) and George Bush Sr (1988).
“This fellow is a business card of the Republican Party. He opens doors in Washington and to the Bush people,” – Charles Lewis wrote about Manafort in his book The Buying of the President 2004. “Today, for the first time in a half century, the Republican Party controls all government. You only need a GOP- passe-partout [GOP stands for Grand Old Party – the unofficial name of the Republican Party]. And Manafort is the guy you need!”
To be honest, the only time Paul Manafort acted as a main top-strategist of an election campaign and not as a member of the staff, his client, the candidate for the president of the United States, Bob Dole got knocked down. In 1996, he was defeated by Bill Clinton. Later Bob Dole was seriously criticized by the Republicans for the lack of a clear platform during the election.
Today Mr. Akhmetov does not deny that he himself initiated a cooperation between the Party of Regions and Paul Manafort and his colleagues.
“At some point, Mr. Manafort, because of his supplementary experience, was recommended as a specialist that could help the Party during the presidential election, - Akhmetov told Ukrains’ka pravda. “When the Party of Regions decided to use Mr. Manafort’s services, the SCM fully severed its relations with him.
Mr. Akmetov also insists that he did not cover the expenses of attracting Mr. Manafort to the electoral campaign staff.
“The only services that were paid by my company were the services Mr. Manafort provided to the SCM,” the richest Ukrainian insists and adds: “The SCM did not pay for any political services, provided by Mr. Manafort to the Party of Regions.”
Anton Pryhorods’kyi, Akhmetov’s business partner and one of the closest friends of the Premier, claims that the services of the Americans were paid “exclusively from the Party’s budget.”
However, the full information about the costs of the services provided by the Americans remains undisclosed – the MPs speak about the amount of 2 to 20 million dollars for the whole campaign. To compare, in the United States similar information about the cost of PR services or for political lobbying is available for access.
When Americans first came to assist in the election campaign, it was not easy for the entourage of Yanukovych and Akhmetov, as their interests conflicted.
On July 3, 2005, Yanukovych announced the appointment of MP Vasyl Khara as a Chief of Election Staff. Mr. Khara represented the old nomenklatura of “Regionals” that was loyal to the leader of the Party. Just then Akhmetov was actively negotiating with “Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly.”
At the end of summer 2005 Victor Yanukovych for the first time was introduced to Paul Manafort and his colleagues in Karlovy Vary [Czech Republic]. At that time there were some rumors in the Party that Rinat Akhmetov and his followers rose in opposition against the Party’s cooperation with radical Russian political technologists, such as Hlib Pavlovskyi.
In 2005 Yanukovych himself understood that he needed a qualitatively new strategy for the new parliamentary election. However, Akhmetov’s suggestion to hire American companies was treated as direct encroachment on the Party’s power.
Nevertheless, the change of political technology was formally agreed. The only task left was to introduce Paul Manafort and his team to the Head Management of the Election Staff. At this point Vasyl Khara all of a sudden opposed the new strategists.
“I do not like Americans. I tried to persuade the top management that before to make a decision we needed to look closely into the strategy they proposed, - told Mr. Khara to Ukrains’ka pravda. “But, as far as I know, nobody received any documents ever.”
Mr. Yanukovych did everything possible to keep Mr. Khara in his position. The last attempt to keep him was made at the beginning of October 2005. For this purpose Mr. Khara was invited to Moscow where, at a mansion under fierce guard, he had a more than one-hour conversation with Victor Yanukovych and his closest friend Anton Prygorodskyi.
Trying to persuade Vasyl Khara to stay, they were telling him about the great achievements of the Americans in European countries, though mentioned nothing about Congo or Angola.
“Paul and his colleagues were also expected to arrive to that meeting. It was planned that Khara would meet with him, would find mutual understanding and would start to work together,” - tells us one of our informants, “but Khara did not wait until Paul’s arrival. He did not want to meet with Manafort in a matter of principle and left before he arrived.”
Several days later Khara resigned: “When I was told that the decisions will be de facto made by them and I will be a kind of master-of-ceremony at a wedding, I decided to resign.”
At the beginning of November, during the regular closed congress of the Party of Regions, Vasyl Dzharty, former Deputy Governor of Donetsk Oblast, became the new head of the Election Staff.
In political circles, as well as in the Party itself, this appointment was seen as a tactical mistake because the new Head of the Staff, as opposed to the “nomenklatura” Khara, was an easy target for the Party’s opponents.
At the same time, Dzharta is traditionally perceived as a person favouring Rinat Akhmetov, though the sources from the entourage of the President of “Shakhtar” deny this proximity.
The appointment of new Head of Staff was a certain victory for Akhmetov in his election campaign fight. The expected result would be at least fifty of his followers in the Parliament.
The Americans started their work in the Election Staff right after the Memorandum between the government and the opposition was signed on September 23, 2005.
“Paul Manafort personally selected his team,” - Borys Kolesnykov told Ukrains’ka pravda. “At that time there was no election in the United States, so he was able to gather a good professional team of both Republicans and Democrats.”
The consultation group under Paul Manafort’s leadership included such permanent members as Philipp Griffin, Richard H. Davis, Rick Ahearn (Ronald Reagan’s authorized representative), and Alex Kyseliov (head of the PR company “Aleksei Kiselev, close friend of Eduard Prutnik).
At various times the Head of “Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly’”s St. Petersburg office Leonid Avrashov, as well as Manafort’s American partners Brian Christianson and Robert Dole, and a former advisor to Newt Gingrich, the head of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress, were invited to cooperate. [The reference to Gingrich in the original text is confusing. Gingrich was the House Speaker between 1995-99 – UKL]
2
During the last elections, US consultants to the Party of Regions worked in two areas: they directed the course of the parliamentary campaign in general, and they worked directly with the leader Viktor Yanukovych. The overall supervisor of both groups was PR technologist Paul Manaford.
The work of the staff underwent noticeable changes right from the first days after the arrival of the Americans, recalls MP Vasyl Khara, who declined to be the Chief of Staff after Manaford came. The work of party activists was curtailed many times over. The main emphasis was placed on the leader, and on those appearances in which he took part.
However, as it turns out, in parallel with the curtailing of the number of activists on duty, there was an optimization of the publicly visible efforts of party representatives. For example, a definite hierarchy of party activists was developed.
“This was a sort of pyramid. At each level there were spokespeople, who in their campaign work were authorized to address only a limited part of the party's program and activities,” relates the leader of a campaign group who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The more senior the spokesperson, the more right he had to improvise.”
This scheme allowed tactical corrections to the party's position in a way that responded to particular situations that arose. High level spokesmen could, in the course of the campaign, correct activists of lower rank.
Incidentally, it was in the Party of Regions that the term “VIP-activist” first appeared, a term unfamiliar to Russian and Ukrainian consultants. There were a total of sixty such individuals, the majority of whom had been the backbone of the Party faction during the previous session of the Verkhovna Rada.
They were split into groups, the leaders of which received from headquarters regular reports on the work of the party, and also directives for the work of the group.
In addition, once a week each VIP-spokesperson received a list of speaking points which they were obliged to deliver in their appearances. These directives were distributed on ordinary A4 sheets of paper, without a date or an author's name. They were simply three to five propositions that had been developed by senior party leadership in close co-operation with the Americans.
These propositions, or “messages” as they were called [using the English term], were issued on a definite and very carefully determined schedule, and during these intervals it was necessary to “toss them to the masses.”
“In general, the American concept was very simple, and relied on the idea of taking one and the same thought and repeatedly burrowing it into the voters,” says one of the leaders of the 2006 campaign. ”Alongside these slogans we could speak about anything that had been approved, it was just that these messages were mandatory. Often, these propositions arose in response to the PR tactics of the opposition. [“PR” in Ukraine refers to public attempts to discredit the integrity of an opponent –UKL] But sometimes one got the impression that what was really important was not how technically well the messages were delivered, so much as their regular repetition.”
Regionals claim that similar tactics were used by the “Orange” parties during the 2004 presidential elections.
“I don't know who was their spin doctor, but they had an obvious tendency to develop a few messages, and to insist that everyone who wore an Orange scarf was to push these same ideas,” recalls MP Anton Pryhods’kyi. Among these were “Jail for the Bandits,” and “Together We Are Many - We Cannot be Defeated.” I am not kidding when I say that I really don’t know, who was working with them. But more than anything else, it would appear the technologies employed had a lot in common.”
At the same time, some sources confirm that Americans were the authors of one of the most visible slogans of the Party of Regions, which was often repeated: “Improvement in Your Life - Today.”
Most deputies gave voice to the slogans they were given without arguments, but there were occasional conflicts.
“We understood that this was pure technology, with no ideology. Some openly derided the speaking notes they were being given as populism and inadequate information, but even so they went into the town squares and said what they were told,” says one of the VIP-activists. But there were exceptions. For example, I remember how Taras Chornovil, having received the sheet about making Russian a second official language and about NATO, tore it up right in front of the group leader and thereafter refused to propagate it.
Chornovil’s colleagues confirm that this same incident was a turning point for his future in the party. They even confirm that Chornovil actually lost his status as a VIP-activist.
To be sure, not all the ideas that the Americans in the Party of Regions headquarters came up with were well-received. In particular, one proposal that was rejected categorically was the use of specially equipped campaign buses brought in from abroad. Hanna Herman even confirms there were plans to bring in special black-skinned drivers to drive these buses.
“That was completely American style. A double-decker bus with all amenities: a toilet, shower, and so on,” describes the head of the 2006 campaign team, Vasyl Dzharty. “They were proposing to chase the activists aboard and have them make a grand tour of all of Ukraine. To be honest, I didn't like it. It doesn't reflect our mentality.”
Sources confirm that in the end this idea was rejected by Viktor Yanukovych himself in the Crimea, where one such bus had been taken, specially-equipped for the party leader. The price of one such bus amounted to close to $700 or $800 thousand dollars.
“Viktor Fedorovych [Yanukovych] frowned and didn’t even want to listen, but he was talked into coming aboard the bus,” relates one individual, who was part of the inner leadership of the party at that time. “He went in. He looked around and said, that this is too much for him.” He continued to travel around in his minibus.
What happened to the buses brought in by the Americans is unknown, but some deputies confirm that they saw these double-decker transporters at the funeral of Evhen Kushnarov.
In addition to the pure campaign work, headquarters also took care of the work with the mass media. This was the responsibility of the owner of NTN channel, Eduard Prutnyk, and his closest assistant was the former head of the customer relations service of the “Inter” TV channel, Ihor Chaban.
After the elections, the anti-crisis coalition voted to appoint Prutnyk the head of the State Committee on Broadcasting, and Mr. Chaban declined all official appointments and became his assistant. Today they have offices side by side in the State Broadcasting building.
In 2005-2006, they developed and were responsible for guiding the entire media campaign of the party. Prutnyk for the most part was concerned with general organizational questions, among them co-operation with TV channels and advertising agencies, while Chaban was busy developing the strategy for the media campaign itself. Chaban and Prutnyk both maintained constant contact with the Americans.
“They often got together with Paul Manaford, conferred with him and co-ordinated their activities,” says a former worker at the headquarters who is now a deputy, Vitalii Zablots’kyi.
“The Americans did not issue operational instructions. This was the job of Chief of Staff Vasyl Dzharty,” describes a former worker from party headquarters. “But certain fundamental guidelines originated with the Americans. For example, they insisted on dropping the junky regional newspapers and TV channels, and to focus the lion’s share of the resources on national TV channels.
Interestingly, Chaban insists that not only did he not socialize with the Americans, but that he didn't even know what they were doing at headquarters.
But there is credible evidence that he appeared as a personal consultant to several party leaders during their public appearances.
On the night of the elections (March 26-27) an Ukrains’ka pravda correspondent witnessed just such a scene. Immediately after the Chief of Staff switched channels from “Zoriana” to “Inter” where he spoke about the victory of the Party of Regions and his intent to form a ruling coalition, Dzharty went upstairs to the second floor where the working offices were located. There, in the presence of Chaban and a translator he assured Paul Manafort, “As you heard, I said everything that you recommended.”
Chaban called upon his former colleagues at the TV channel “Inter” to help with the media campaign. By the way, these specialists carried out rather interesting training for the five Regionals who took part in the televised debates on March 19, 2006 on Channel 5.
According to the words of participants in this group exercise, Americans were present in the room where the training was taking place, among them Paul Manafort, and also Philip Griffin. In order to prepare Mykola Azarov, Raisa Bohatyrova, Borys Kolesnikov, Evhen Kushnarov, and Taras Chornovil, they carried out a special instructional game.
“They gave us a marble to pass around as a speaking cue. It didn’t matter what you said. It could be any absurd idea. The key concept was to always be psychologically ready for any kind of reaction or attacks from partners.”
The trainer was a woman who was also a colleague of Ihor Chaban. In addition to verbal battles, the party leaders were asked, among other things, to express various emotions in mime.
“It was most difficult with Azarov. He is by nature a very restrained person but at the same time short-fused, and in response to practically all questions he gave the impression of being either disinterested or easily angered. However, on the whole the atmosphere was very cordial. They discussed and thought about everything, including what each of them should wear. For example, the late Evhen Kushnarov suggested coming in jeans and sweaters.”
After several hours of training, the Regionals were able to respond freely to queries from colleagues, and pauses between answers had shortened considerably.
Interestingly, throughout the entire parliamentary campaign, the activists never came into direct contact with the Americans.
“At meetings, the group leaders often mentioned the Americans, but they didn’t conduct any seminars or training, as had been done earlier by the Russians,” reports one of the deputies. “The majority of the deputies, among them even the VIP-activists, never saw the Americans.”
“This once again attests to the fact that they didn’t direct the election campaign directly," laughs Anton Pryhods’kyi. “They’d see them in a different light! You saw the central headquarters, you saw the VIP-activists, you saw the work of the regional headquarters, but you did not see these people. This is normal. The fact of the matter is that the consultations with the Americans substantially influenced the campaign as a whole, but there was no direct command from their side. On the whole we are happy with their work for the party. They introduced a certain constructiveness and clarity, both theoretical and practical, in some approaches to the campaign strategy.”
This will be continued. In the next installment, you can read how the American PR technologists taught Yanukovych now to raise his hands.
3
But the main efforts of the Americans were concentrated on the leader of the Party of Regions. This is explained by the fact that the rating of Viktor Yanukovych was much higher than the rating of his party after the elections. It is interesting to know that, at the end of 2005, around 15% of the population in Eastern regions did not perceive Yanukovych as connected to the Party of Regions.
The closest entourage of the present Prime Minister insistently advised him to create a Viktor Yanukovych Bloc. Publicly, he was trying to avoid the discussion on the issue, but privately such an option was acknowledged.
The Americans took the strong position that individual-based Blocs should remain in the past, and that the main work had to be done on the link between the party and its leader in the perception of voters. Such an option presupposed that the political capital accumulated around the former presidential candidate would carry over to the entire party.
Perhaps this explains why the Americans took the most active part in the preparation of mass party gatherings involving Yanukovych. “We admitted almost openly that the main emphasis in such gatherings should be placed on the external attributes and symbols of the party”, - says one of the former organizers.
The leader’s appearance in public was considered to the smallest details. A separate group of consultants appeared on the premises far ahead of the leader. They carefully coordinated the trajectory of the leader’s appearance, passage, and leaving the stage. Maximum use of the party attributes and symbols was one of the main requirements for stage decoration.
During his travel and public appearances, the group accompanying the leader consisted of bodyguards and an additional four to six people: video operator, two to four assistants and the group coordinator. “They accompanied him everywhere. All his steps were filmed. When he was passing, two special assistants pushed people aside, so that the operators could film him easily. They were constantly in touch with coordinators through the radio. They were not related to the security services, they simply were informing us that they were filming”, - an organizer of such events remarked.
The Americans created a general concept of the event, but got involved only at the last stages of the preparation. The actual direction of the events was most often accomplished by the Ukrainian specialists, headed by Chaban.
“I remember very vividly how the first five events were prepared: after the official part in Zorianyi, a separate group of specialists would prepare a party concert at the Sport Palace. This was a separate show-presentation, only for the insiders,”- recounts one of the participants of the campaign.
The style and the decoration of the events often resembled the Republican or the Democratic conventions in the US, where the next presidential candidate is presented. Valentyna Basovska, the musical producer of the TV channel Inter and recruited by Chaban, was directing the event.
The Regionals themselves acknowledged the influence of the American consultants on the organization of the show. Many of them were joking later that the appearance of the top ten resembled the scenes from some old Western film. A giant screen was mounted behind the stage, and just below the stage a separate lounge was built for the most respected guests and the press.
Viktor Yanukovych appeared on the stage from the blue smoke, accompanied by the patriotic music and bright lighting. The hall, filled by the thousands of delegates sent from various regions of Ukraine, met the leader with the wave of blue flags. The grand show was designed to demonstrate the unity within the Party of Regions – and the demonstration was intended not for the guests, but for the delegates themselves.
The speeches of the top ten concluded in the American fashion too: the rain of the white-blue confetti flooded the stage. The last convention of the Republican Party in Boston finished almost in the same way.
The scenes from the event were incorporated into the numerous clips translated on the TV. The footage was carefully analyzed and discussed in the party headquarters. The comments for the organizers were prepared separately.
While assisting Yanukovych during his trips, the Americans personally prepared the party leader. The 45-year old Philip Griffin was employed as a personal adviser and the image maker to Yanukovych. Griffin practically supervised the entire team of assistants during the Yanukovych’s trips.
The biography of Griffin indicates that he played in the junior league of the Munich’s “Bavaria” until the age of 17. Appearing in the team of Paul Manafort, he found a common ground with his client practically from the first days. “Contrary to Paul Manafort, who appeared as very organized and a closed person, Phil was very cheerful and open”, - recounts a member of the Regionals team in 2006. “Manafort spoke only through an interpreter, but I suspect he understood quite a bit. By contrast, Phil spoke very good Russian, and by the end of the campaign he was practically fluent.”
The Regionals themselves think that the party leader is hardly susceptible to outside influences. “I have difficulties to imagine that the people who are barely acquainted with him can influence him somehow or force him to change,” - says Hanna Herman, a long-time speechwriter and the sole image-maker of the present premier.
But a lot of people recognize that Yanukovych is very flexible and learns quickly. Even the closest party colleagues of Yanukovych were quite impressed by his reincarnations during the TV debates with Yushchenko before the 2004 presidential elections.
“He was not at all the same person we knew from the speeches at the party events. A lot of things in him were foreign and manufactured, but at the same time they appeared quite organic,” - recounts one MP.
A lot of details about creating the appearance of Yanukovych during the parliamentary elections will remain a mystery. But some details can be guessed by comparing the looks of the party leader in the summer of 2005 to his looks in the winter of the same year. Active participation of Americans in his campaign started in September-October of 2005. Two months later, as his fellow party members testified, he started to look much “younger and fashionable.” The people who did not know him very well thought he had an operation, but in fact he just got a shorter haircut. It was not really noticeable, but changed his looks significantly.” The former aids of Yanukovych from the presidential elections of 2004 also noticed the change in the way he talked: his language became much more varied and had a pronounced democratic leaning.
It is known that at the end of 2005 the leader of the Party of Regions resumed his course of Ukrainian, which he abandoned back in October of 2004. It is interesting that he talked about studying the official language long before moving to Kyiv.
“A lot of people think that he started doing it after entering the big politics in Kyiv. If fact, he publicly announced the intention while still being the Governor of the Donetsk region”, - his long-term colleague noted. “In one of the meetings, it was back in 1999 or 2000, he suddenly switched to Ukrainian and announced that he took a responsibility to speak Ukrainian at least during the public events. Just to avoid problems in the future, Yanukovych explained.”
During the parliamentary campaign of 2006, the Americans tried to minimize the improvisations of the leader in public. They used the so-called “concealing” technique. He was left one to one with journalists as rarely as possible. It was practically forbidden for him to talk: no synchronic statements, no commentaries. Yanukovych was shown only in action – here he is going somewhere, doing something, meets somebody, and then briefly appears on camera.
“I was told that the Americans and other consultants working for him are simply afraid that he has nothing to say, that he is empty. But in the real life Yanukovych is a wonderful companion,” says his former consultant in the presidential campaign of 2004. “In our travels through the regions, several times I sat next to him in the bus. And several times we had quite an honest conversation. To tell you the truth, I was surprised. In the personal conversation, Yanukovych opens up, tells you something about himself, something about his own experiences and worries. He knows how to express himself, and uses bright, and I would say juicy, words. He does not create the impression of the “brick” that so many people see in him. But before leaving the bus, he suddenly stopped talking and immersed in his thoughts. Maybe he was trying to remember his speeches. Sometimes he took a newspaper in Ukrainian and methodically studied it, from the beginning till the end.”
Yanukovych practically never showed up in events without a previously prepared text of his speech. During the parliamentary elections, the leader’s speeches were prepared by Hanna Herman and his present aid Hramotniev. Now, this work is done by the entire staff of advisers, but they are still supervised by Herman.
Speeches are prepared for Yanukovych on every occasion and for every visit, especially for the visits abroad. Yanukovych appears with the word-for-word text for the speech even during the open sessions of the Cabinet of Ministers.
Even the gestures of Yanukovych are associated with the work of his American consultants. The gesture with which he finishes practically all his speeches today is also attributed to their influence. In the earlier footage, from the time of the presidential elections, Yanukovych never used this gesture. He looked constrained, with his arms passively hanging along his body. The maximum he allowed himself was to bend his arm and to wave to the crowd. It is interesting to note that Yanukovych uses the same victorious gesture that Yushchenko used during his speeches on Maidan of Independence in 2004.
4
It is rather difficult to assess the impact of the American consultants on the 2006 parliamentary campaign of the Regions as well as their role in the party. The changes that the Americans brought to the conduct of the campaign and the recommendations they insisted on, can make one conclude that Paul Manafort and his aides have become an instrument in the struggle within the party between the two centers of influence – Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Yanukovych.
Surprisingly, in regard to the key issues concerning the strategy of the development of the party, the Americans were keeping in line with the owner of the System Capital Management (SCM).
During the 2006 elections, Rinat Akhmetov was strongly opposed to the creation of the Yanukovych Bloc despite the fact that sociologists and even the opponents of the Party of Regions predicted that in the end it would be a successful move. However, the owner of the SCM was acutely aware that should it happen, his influence in the party as well as that of his allies would decline.
The Americans answered the call and, together with the head of elections headquarters Vasyl Dzharty, did everything possible to increase the ratings of the party by exploiting Viktor Yanukovych’s personal image, which had been eroded due to its close association with the party brand.
It is known that until the end of October 2006 negotiations were going on regarding the creation of a united opposition bloc on the basis of the Party of Regions, which would include the Natalia Vitrenko Bloc and the Social Democrats United. According to some sources, those negotiations prompted the Social Democrats to hurry up and create the “Ne Tak” bloc, which was supposed to become one of the pillars of the future united opposition. The slogans of the bloc were in fact identical to what leaders of the Party of Regions were saying. While the Yanukovych supporters themselves made the decision not to cooperate with Natalia Vitrenko by the end of the summer 2005, the negotiations with the SDPU(u) continued until the end of October. Meanwhile, the leader of the Party of Regions would speak of the SDPU(u) and the “Ne Tak” bloc very favorably.
At the same time, sources close to Rinat Akhmetov maintain that he was categorically opposed to cooperation with the SDPU(u). Allegedly, Akhmetov was openly saying that by creating a joint list of candidates with the Social Democrats, the Party of Regions would be forced to share power and portfolios with the people who “cannot be trusted.” The owner of SCM, for example, considers himself the exact opposite of Hryhorii Surkis, as far as relations with business partners are concerned. Akhmetov has been talking openly about the fallout between him and the current owners of the Industrial Union of Donbass (ISD), Vitaly Haiduk and Serhiy Taruta, which he considers a model case of how to deal with business partners. On the other hand, Pinchuk, Surkis and Hryhoryshyn parted ways in a very different manner, pointed out one of the closest friends of the SCM owner.
Again, the advice of Paul Manafort and Philip Griffin turn out to be quite similar with
Rinat Akhmetov’s perception of the situation:
“They were very much against creation of any such blocs, especially with the Social Democrats whom they recommend to keep at a safe distance,” a person close to the leader of the Party of Regions is quoted as saying.
“I don’t know whether Akhmetov had something to do with it or, perhaps, Kolesnikov, but Manafort came up with a nice and plausible story. I witnessed how he went at great lengths to explain it to Yanukovych, saying that “see, in the West you are associated with Kuchma. It would be a total disaster if you decide to cooperate with Medvedchuk and Surkis.”
At the same time, according to some of the participants of the 2006 campaign, the people in charge of the party’s elections headquarters never bothered themselves with getting even-estimated data on how the proposed united opposition bloc would fare in the upcoming elections.
At the beginning of November, Yanukovych finally had to yield, and on November 5 during the so called “technical” convention of the Party of Regions he stated that the party would go into the elections alone.
For the last time, the viewpoints of the Americans and Akhmetov’s proponents concurred after the parliamentary elections. In June of 2006, when the negotiations regarding creation of the Orange coalition were on the verge of collapse, it was Raisa Bohatyryova, who is close to the SCM owner, who would speak often about the possibility of the Party of Regions and Our Ukraine joining forces. Privately, Akhmetov would express a positive opinion of Viktor Yushchenko and in general held a moderate position. While talking to journalists in August of 2006, during the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of Shakhtar in Donetsk, he openly stated that creation of such a coalition would be a sensible thing to do.
At the same time, Viktor Yanukovych and his closest allies were loath to comment on the possibility of such alliance, and their statements on the issue would be made in an equivocal manner.
Again, the Americans ended up on the same side of the fence with the SCM owner. According to some deputies, they maintained that an alliance with Our Ukraine would be the most desirable option and considered the negotiations with the Socialists and Communists to be a back-up scenario.
After the 2006 parliamentary elections, the party brass extended the contract with the “Davis, Manafort and Freeman
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