MPs from the Servant of the People party have the most assistants, with 235 members of the faction employing 3,269 assistants. Non-factional MPs have the fewest subordinates, with 253 assistants for 19 MPs. This is evidenced by the results of a study by the analysts of the R&D centre YouControl, Komersant ukrainskyi
reports
In the 9th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, MPs have a total of 6,000 assistants. For comparison, the 8th convocation had 10 thousand assistants.
The Servant of the People faction employed the largest number of assistants – 3,269 assistants for 235 members of the faction.
Non-factional MPs have the fewest assistants – 253 assistants for 19 MPs.
Viktor Chornyi of the Platform for Life and Peace has the most assistants among the current MPs – 54 people. Petro Poroshenko of the European Solidarity party has no assistants.
On average, there are 15 consultants per MP. Among them, there are 3980 men (66%) and 2047 women (34%). 4355 assistants (72 per cent) work on a voluntary basis, while 1672 (28 per cent) are paid.
Fourteen people have worked as assistants for six consecutive convocations (4-9 convocations). They replaced MPs, sometimes even working with representatives of different political forces.
For example, Kseniia Loboda assists non-partisan Yuliia Svitlychna and member of the Servant of the People faction Serhii Demchenko. She was an assistant to MPs of the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th convocations. In particular, Oleksii Kunchenko, Serhii Moshak and Taisiia Povalii from the Party of Regions.
Who has the most assistants:
Viktor Chornyi from the “Platform for Life and Peace” group has the most assistants among all current MPs – 54 people (50 people on a voluntary basis and 4 on a paid basis). Viktor Chornyi’s assistant was his business partner Ivan Boichenko (LLC “DOA “Storm”, LLC “Security Agency “Storm” and others). Boychenko and the Storm group of security companies are mentioned in the materials of Bigus.Info as being associated with former MP Viktor Medvedchuk.
Svyatoslav Yurash, a member of the Servant of the People party , had 53 assistants during the entire period of convocation. This is the largest number of consultants in the faction. During this time, 47 people worked with him on a voluntary basis and 6 on a paid basis.
His faction colleague Oleh Arseniuk has 26 consultants. For some time, Volodymyr Khalay was Arseniuk’s assistant. He appears in several publications, where he is associated with the company LLC “BUILDING MANAGEMENT-77”. According to spending.gov.ua, this company received more than UAH 186 million of budget funds in 2018-2024. This information can be found in the section “Public Expenditures” in the company’s dossier.
Oleksandr Merezhko of the Servants engaged 10 people to work on lawmaking. Mr Merezhko’s former assistant is lawyer Pavlo Kuftyrev. “Bigus.info wrote that Kuftyrev was one of the visitors to MP Mykola Tyshchenko’s Velour during the covid quarantine. They also cited media reports that in the 2000s, Kuftyrev worked closely with the Kiperman family of businessmen, who are close to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. In addition, he was an assistant to several other MPs in other convocations: Kostyantyn Yarynich (Petro Poroshenko Bloc) in the 8th convocation, Valeriy Kharlim (Party of Regions) in the 6th convocation and Serhiy Pobedov (SDPU (o)) in the 4th convocation.
MP Oleksandr Feldman of the “Restoration of Ukraine” party was assisted by 49 people (43 on a voluntary basis and 6 on a paid basis) in his legislative work.
His colleague from the deputy group, Vadym Stolar , engaged 11 assistants. Mr Stolar’s assistant, Yulia Ulasyk, was elected to the Kyiv City Council on the list of the now-banned OPFL in 2020. In the period from April 2017 to June 2019, Yulia Ulasyk was the head of the Tianya Link Centre for Modern China LLC. For some time, this company was part of the sphere of influence of Anton Zatsepin, the husband of Iryna Gerashchenko, a member of the European Solidarity MP, who was also a member of the European Parliament. Another Stolar’s assistant, Kostiantyn Sych, is the head of Stream Investment JSC, whose beneficiary is Inna Maistruk, the ex-wife of MP Stolar. The couple divorced in the autumn of 2023. Kostiantyn Sych also appears in the publication “Bigus.Info” as an employee of the company “Legendas-M”, which competed with “Imoti Star” in the bidding process and supplied the State Reserve with low-quality fuel.
Bohdan Torokhtiy is the leader in terms of the number of assistants in the Party for the Future – 45 (32 people on a voluntary basis and 13 on a paid basis). Businessman Akshyn Yusifov is an assistant to MP Torokhtiia and was mentioned in a media investigation into abuses during the tender for the development of project documentation for the construction of an airport in Zakarpattia. He has interests in construction and is a member of a number of companies: Mostobud Invest LLC, Land Bud UA LLC, Jupiter Finance LLC, Land Bud Project UA Consortium.
As for Torokhtiia’s colleague in the deputy group, Ihor Palytsia, 6 people cooperated with him. Among them is Oleksandr Tovsteniuk, who is listed as Palytsia’s assistant in the 7th and 9th convocations and has the most media mentions in the “Reputation in the media” section of YouControl. Tovsteniuk was the head of the Ihor Palytsia Foundation “Only Together” from 2012 to 2021. In 2018, charges of drunken driving were dropped against him. He is a shareholder in METALIST PJSC, which received almost UAH 2.7 million in budget funds from the Lutsk City Council and its departments in 2015-2021.
Valeriy Dubil, a member of the Batkivshchyna party, had 37 people in his team (29 on a voluntary basis and 8 on a paid basis).
The deputy head of this parliamentary faction, Serhiy Sobolev , had 35 assistants. Among them is Stepan Horuts, the head of the Ternopil regional organisation of the Batkivshchyna party, who is a subject of the journalistic investigation of the publication “How the City Council “merges” millions to the firms of Kaminskyi and Pushkar” of 15.05.2023 regarding abuses in procurement in the Ternopil City Council. He is a member of Royal Contract LLC, Legion Private Security Company (security firms), and Hospodar LLC (wholesale and retail trade).
Robert Horvat and Serhiy Shakhov had 33 assistants each in the DOVIRA parliamentary group. Shakhov’s assistant is Mykola Sambozhuk. The investigation by hromadske.ua refers to an attempt to monopolise the market of alert systems, where MP Serhiy Shakhov, through ministries and other state bodies, allegedly pushes a company associated with his advisor (Mykola Sambozhuk), possibly a Russian citizen, into this market.
In theEuropean Solidarity, Mykhailo Bondar has the most consultants – 31 assistants, including 27 probono and 4 paid.
Solomiia Bobrovska, a member of the GOLOS faction in the Verkhovna Rada, had 28 assistants (25 on a voluntary basis and 3 on a paid basis).
Her colleague from the faction, Kira Rudyk , worked with 15 people, including her assistant Natalia Delieva. This is the wife of Lev Deliev, the sound engineer of the Masks troupe and brother of Heorhiy Deliev, who is the artistic director of the Masks troupe.
Among the non-factional MPs, Mykola Tyshchenko has the most assistants – 27 people (23 on a voluntary basis and 4 on a paid basis). In addition, 3 of his consultants are featured in journalistic investigations. Evelina Andrievska, his current assistant under an employment contract, and 2 former ones – Yulia Zahynay and Oleksandr Sitak. All three are mentioned in the Bigus.Info article “Vereshchuk does not want to be responsible for hostesses and developers on the list of “Servants” – complains about Tyshchenko” of 23.10.2020 as persons who were on the list of candidates for deputies to the Kyiv City Council from the Servant of the People party. In particular, it is stated that Evelina Andrievska and Yulia Zahynay worked in Tyshchenko’s group of restaurants, and Oleksandr Sitak is his business partner. Mr Sitak is a member of Svit Ltd, which until June 2024 was owned by Alla Baranovska, the ex-wife of Mykola Tyshchenko.