A public talk held by DemAlliance in Kyiv this summer, with Vasyl Hatsko (left), Yevheniya Kuleba (centre left), Viktor Chumak (centre right) and Serhiy Leshchenko (far right). Image: DemAlliance.Ukraine has never been a land for liberals. In 25 years of independence, the country’s liberal, European integrationists have never had a legitimate political party to represent them. Numerous parties claiming to do so have operated as fronts for oligarchic interests or been too weak to affect national politics.
Now, two-and-a-half years after the EuroMaidan Revolution, a new political party is taking up the mantle of Ukrainian liberalism. At the end of June, news broke that Ukrainian MPs Svitlana Zalishchuk, Serhiy Leshchenko and Mustafa Nayyem — the core of the Verkhovna Rada’s “Euro-Optimist” caucus — were planning on joining Democratic Alliance, positioning the Kyiv-based party to appeal to a supposedly expanding constituency: Ukraine’s liberal, pro-European voters. Less than two weeks later, a rejuvenated DemAlliance held its first party congress in Kyiv, outlining a platform that emphasised “transforming Ukraine into a modern European country.”
Many of DemAlliance’s new, high-profile members defected from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (BPP), the Ukrainian president’s eponymous parliamentary faction that, like other blocs in the Rada, is facing renewed criticism for its cozy relationship with the country’s oligarchs.
