The Ukrainian oligarchs will fall victim to upcoming local elections of 2015, Kolomoiskyi told The Washington Post in his offices in Kiev, at his first interview since his resignation as the governor of Dnipropetrovsk region.
“When you have a coalition that consists of two gigantic factions and three tiny ones, you get coalition fights,” he said. “Now, we have local elections that are coming. Naturally, to up their ratings and get new voters, they have to find a new subject on which they can promote themselves…and the best clients to make a sacrifice of for the electorate are the oligarchs.”
“I became the biggest trigger for society. And since I’ve been the biggest trigger for the whole population, and the politicians cannot promote themselves based on war, they decided to promote themselves based on me,” he stated.
The oligarch also explained that his intentions to resign were aimed “to show the nation that I am not holding this position if public opinion thinks I need to resign.”
“I thought the situation came too far, that the next step would be me accused of separatism, and I made this decision in order to calm down this situation,” he added.
“I understand that I’m an example to others, and if everyone acts independently, then the president is not needed,” he said. “Poroshenko was patient with me for quite a while. If I were in his position, I would have kicked myself out in three months, because the person who is a superior cannot be an equal with a person who works for him … you can’t be in power and also criticize it.”
The former politician also warned the president of his biggest danger.
“Poroshenko is building a new country,” he said. “But the biggest danger for him is not outside enemies. It’s his inner circle. He needs to look carefully after that because the entourage makes the king.”
“We will support him in many ways, and I want everything to succeed,” he said. “We will calm down the people, we will present the new governor, we will just say that this is a political change. And we will try to convince them that everything will be fine.”
And he himself will get back to business, as “I’ve always thought of myself more as a businessman than a politician,” the oligarch stated.