Kiva’s political trajectory is quite curious, to say the least. After 2014, he emerged as a far-right thug with a police cap, a local leader of Right Sector and a protégé of one local postmodernist right-wing trickster who remodeled him to become a “new Mussolini”.

Prior to serving in the police, Kyva had a criminal record for taking bribes as a petty official but got off with a light sentence thanks to a (probably fake) medical certificate from the psychiatric hospital.

Later, he bragged about torturing his own fighters for heavy drinking, in one of the battalions in the war in Donbas.

In the police, he was responsible for the “war on drugs” causing much controversy due to his extrajudicial methods and calls to “obliterate drug addicts, gays, separatists and so on”. After a number of outrageous raids and epic failures he was promoted to the public status of a well-known laughing-stock, but also became an offical adviser to the notorious minister of interior Avakov.

His superior minister put Kyva in charge of a paramilitary group and a sort of police officer trade union, and ultimately dispatched him to seize control of the Socialist Party of Ukraine. Once a beacon of hope to the democratic left opposition to president Kuchma’s oligarchic rule, this party became plagued from rotten compromises with oligarchic coalitions; diminished and discredited, it was contested by several political swindlers, with Kyva finally emerging victorious (via the forcible takeover of party premises).

A complete outsider for the SPU, and with a far-right background, Kyva threw out all the real Socialist Party activists and replaced them with his surrogates. These included the bizarre conspiracy theorist Stremusov, who has more recently been involved in starting a shooting at a local newspaper office, and is now one of the pathetic bunch of quislings collaborating with Russian occupiers in Kherson.

In the open field of 39 candidates in Ukraine’s 2019 presidential election, Kyva finished among the least sucfessfull, with less than 0.3% of votes.

At which point this “great patriot Kyva” made another U-turn and became a darling of the Russian TV shitshows and the other media controlled by the most pro-Russian Kyiv oligarch Medvedchuk. Kyva joined Medvedchuk’s ’Opposition Platform - For Life’ party in time for Ukraine’s most recent parliamentary election. His transition from a grotesque Banderite to an equally grotesque anti-Banderite in a Soviet Army fur cap was swift, but the image of a bald, brainless, bonehead brute remained the same. Arguably Ukraine’s most ridiculous MP, Kyva was apparently bored by his parliamentary duties (apart from some happy moments during fistfights, or when touching his genitals on camera).

His scandals provided lots of topics for investigative journalism. Of course there were his corruption schemes, the most famous of which, Silt Silo, has become a meme in Ukrainian social media. Journalists also picked up on his derogatory comments (e.g., he managed to make fun of the death of George Floyd and at the same time of the people killed on Maidan). Media analysed his links to Russia or the ghostwritten, plagiarized and quite nonsense PhD thesis he presented. Obtaining ceremonial degrees (in a region where most actual scientists barely make ends meet) is a common practice for Ukrainian politicians, but it was particularly hilarious in the case of this guy who typically struggles to string a coherent sentence together.

Now he has gone full bonkers and joined the chorus of putinist propagandists trying to normalize the most monstrous thing ever, nuclear warfare (one of his latest Telegram posts is illustrated with a mushroom cloud, argues against any Russian negotiations with Zelenskiy, and instead encourages the use of weapons of mass destruction. He concludes with the incredibly stupid and cynical line “If anyone thinks that this is not according to the rules, remember: the West wrote these rules in its own interests”.

That’s what the worst pro-Putin stooge in Ukraine looks like.

Denis Pilash

Click here to subscribe to ESSF newsletters in English and/or French.