The leader of the banned pro-Russian party OPZZH, and now the head of the parliamentary group in the Verkhovna Rada, Yuri Boyko, continues to actively defend Russian interests - even during a full-scale war with Russia.
Recently, he was outraged by the dismissal of a taxi driver for refusing to speak Ukrainian. Boyko promised to employ him and criticized the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, Taras Kremin, who advocated punishing the taxi driver. The people's deputy himself also still principally conducts his public communications in Russian and with Kremlin narratives.
Before that, Boyko protested from the rostrum of parliament against the ban on the Moscow church. In addition, Boyko is the only people’s deputy of the current convocation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine who was included in the broadcast of the Russian propagandist Solovyov after the start of the full-scale invasion. They mocked the tragic situation in the country and the presentation of information by the Ukrainian media.
In 2023, Ukraine returned control of gas and oil drilling platforms - the infamous “Boiko derricks” off the coast of Crimea. But the state has still not deprived the person involved in the corruption case for their acquisition and the ex-Minister of Energy during the Azarov era, Yuriy Boyko, of the title of Hero of Ukraine.
The HONEST movement, in the #Portrait of the People's Deputy section, analyzed data from the Verkhovna Rada website to find out what kind of legislator the pro-Russian politician and ex-regional leader Yuriy Boyko is, what requests he sends, what bills he submits amendments to, and what topics his speeches in the session hall are devoted to.
Political evolution
Like the vast majority of ex-regional people's deputies in the current Verkhovna Rada, Yuriy Boyko was repeatedly elected to parliament. For the first time he became a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the VI convocation on the lists of the Party of Regions. But besides this, he managed to work in positions in other branches of government - as the head of NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine during the time of Leonid Kuchma, in the government of the regional traitor Mykola Azarov as Minister of Fuel and Energy, and then even as Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine.
Boyko’s infamous conferment of the title of Hero of Ukraine and the awarding of the Order of “Power” took place in 2004, when Leonid Kuchma was president. Then Boyko headed NJSC Naftogaz and agreed on gas debts to Russia and Turkmenistan. The decree defines this in a typical clerical formulation: “for outstanding personal services to the Ukrainian state in the development of the fuel and energy complex, many years of dedicated work.”
The irony is that within a few years Boyko became the subject of a corruption investigation known as the “Boiko Towers.” He is suspected of involvement in the purchase of two offshore drilling rigs through offshore companies. In particular, the state-owned company Chernomorneftegaz, which at that time was subordinate to Boyko’s ministry, bought these towers based on the results of a tender. The state's losses from this purchase are estimated at $400 million.
In the summer of 2023, the Ukrainian military regained control of the “Boiko towers” off the coast of Crimea, but, unfortunately, Yuriy Boyko still retains the title of Hero of Ukraine. Citizens, through a petition, demanded the immediate deprivation of Boyko of this title, but Prime Minister Denis Shmygal has still not found sufficient grounds for applying personal sanctions, which would allow this to happen.
It should be noted that back in April 2022, the Verkhovna Rada voted in the first reading for bill No. 6163 authored by Roman Lozinsky (“Voice”) and other people’s deputies of parliament, which provides for the deprivation of state awards from persons who publicly supported the annexation of Crimea, justify the occupation of Ukrainian territories, publicly deny armed Russian aggression against Ukraine and popularize the leadership of the aggressor state. Since then, the bill is still under consideration for the second reading in the Committee of State Security and Defense.
In addition, Yuriy Boyko repeatedly ran for president, but all his attempts were unsuccessful. In 2014, even after the Russian aggression, his election program expectedly contained points on granting the Russian language status as a state language, strengthening ties with Russia and the countries of the Customs Union.
But already in 2019, Boyko, as a presidential candidate, together with the head of the political council of the OPZZh Viktor Medvedchuk, traveled to Moscow, where they met with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Chairman of the Board of Gazprom Alexei Miller. According to Russian media, Boyko, at a meeting with Medvedev, stated the need for negotiations on mutual lifting of sanctions.
During the first months of the 2019 presidential campaign, Boyko became the leader in the number of television advertisements. The self-nominated candidate, who was advertised under the party brand OPZZH, appeared in advertising blocks 2,695 times. In terms of the number of impressions on television, Boyko was slightly ahead of even then President Petro Poroshenko.
However, huge advertising expenses did not help him become the leader of the presidential race, and he took fourth place with a result of 11.67% (2.2 million votes).
What is Boyko talking about?
During the work of the Verkhovna Rada of the 9th convocation, Yuriy Boyko had only 42 speeches - 3 from the floor and 39 from the podium. The main speaker of the banned OPZZH was another “political chameleon”, who was recently arrested on suspicion of treason, Nestor Shufrich. During this convocation of parliament he made about a thousand speeches from the floor and from the rostrum.
It is significant that a few days before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the people’s deputies of the OPZZh, led by Boyko, had a special information campaign on social networks aimed at “pacification”, implementation of the Minsk agreements and negotiations with the occupiers. In particular, Yuriy Boyko said in parliament then that Ukraine supposedly has “inadequate power” that has not brought peace. He also said that the OPZZh faction registered a resolution on the immediate implementation of the Minsk agreements and the cessation of hostilities.
“This is a responsible political step that will immediately reduce tension both in the country and outside. If this parliament is not capable of taking such political steps that the whole country is waiting for, then you just need to have the political and simply human conscience to dissolve itself and give the people of Ukraine the opportunity to elect a new parliament, new deputies who will fulfill their promises to lead the country to peace and they will prove this to society by deeds,” Boyko said from the podium of the Verkhovna Rada.
Representatives of the OPZZH in the first plenary days of 2022 spoke about the “immediate implementation of the Minsk agreements” at every opportunity - in the opening speech, when discussing the agenda of the Verkhovna Rada, etc. In addition, the people's deputies of the OPZZh, among other things, denied that the “DPR” and “LPR” are terrorist organizations, as demanded by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in 2015. They demanded that the Verkhovna Rada vote for bills on elections in the occupied territories, an amnesty for persons, an economic blockade and the restoration of economic relations, and begin a dialogue with direct negotiations with ORDLO.
And already during his last speech before the vote to ban the Russian church, Boyko assured that the church in Ukraine is separated from the state, and the rector of the Moscow Patriarchate Onufry (Orest Berezovsky), who received Russian captive occupiers in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra and spread Russian propaganda, is patriot:
“On my own behalf, I know Bishop Onuphry, the rector of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He is a patriot of Ukraine and enjoys the trust of believers.”
It is significant that during this voting the votes against were mainly from people’s deputies from the groups PZZHM and “Restoration of Ukraine,” created after the ban on the pro-Russian party OPZZH.
Boyko's requests and bills
During the work of the Verkhovna Rada of the 9th convocation, Yuriy Boyko sent 13 deputy requests - to the Cabinet of Ministers, the Pension Fund, the Office of the Prosecutor General, the State Bureau of Investigation, the Zhytomyr Regional State Administration, and the like.
A deputy request is a demand that was supported by parliament, and each MP can send an appeal himself. Requests can be not only individual, but also from a group of people’s deputies. The requests of each deputy are announced within the walls of parliament, recorded in the Verkhovna Rada Office and published in the deputy’s profile, where the status of their consideration is shown. Unlike requests, for some reason parliamentary appeals in the profiles of people’s deputies are still not published; they are not in the public domain, although they were the cause of a number of high-profile anti-corruption investigations.
Boyko’s first parliamentary request in 2019 concerned obtaining information on the volume and structure of debt for pension payments to people who are registered with the Pension Fund and live in the territories of Donetsk and Lugansk regions not controlled by Ukraine, internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Boyko’s Pension Fund, among other things, responded that since August 2014, 121.4 thousand pensioners, who as of August 2014 were registered in certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, temporarily not controlled, have not applied for the renewal of pension payments Ukrainian authorities. However, there is no information about whether these pensioners are alive, about their place of residence or travel to other countries. The Pension Fund of Ukraine does not have any other information regarding persons living in these territories.
Boyko’s other requests related to various topics: the competitiveness of products of domestic mining and metallurgical enterprises; illegal actions of officials of the Main Directorate of the State GeoCadastre in the Cherkasy region regarding the failure to comply with a court decision; ensuring, observing and protecting the rights of the child by local executive authorities of united territorial communities, etc.
During the work of the Verkhovna Rada of the 9th convocation, Boyko submitted as an author or co-author 100 bills, of which 37 became valid acts. Mostly these are decisions from a group of authors that were filed over the past two years. It is interesting that more than a dozen initiatives by Boyko, together with other deputies from the OPZZh faction, were submitted on the first day of the parliament of this convocation.
But Yuriy Boyko’s amendments are much more modest - he submitted them to only two bills on the state budget of Ukraine (for 2021 and 2022) in the first reading. Of the 443 registered amendments, Boyko only took three into account, 66 were partially taken into account, and all the rest were rejected.
Let us remind you that the Movement HONESTLY appealed to the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky with a demand to deprive the highest title of the state - Hero of Ukraine - from persons who are included in the Register of Traitors, namely: Yuriy Boyko, Boris Deitch, Nikolai Bagrov, Mikhail Zhar and others.
Earlier in the series “Portrait of a People’s Deputy,” the Movement HONESTLY wrote about the work of OPZZh leader Viktor Medvedchuk in parliament, the parliamentary embarrassments of “auditor” Nikolai Tishchenko, the ups and downs of Dmitry Razumkov, the evolution from assistant to head of the Rada Alexander Kornienko and the parliamentary everyday life of the “eternal oppositionist” Yulia Tymoshenko .
