Episode 8
Vice-President Bohdan

Ajoker, a hedonist, a sybarite, a political prankster, and a violator of all written and unwritten rules, Andriy Bohdan has been, and always will be, a colorful character in Volodymyr Zelensky’s circle. Hardly anyone can surpass him in terms of arrogance, as can be demonstrated by the fact that the world revolves around him and not the other way around.

Legends have arisen about this lover of vacations abroad on his yacht and the owner of a Tesla, about how he knocked out the tooth of the head of the SBU Ivan Bakanov and ignored the rules set by Zelensky, about his seemingly sudden resignation in July 2019 and how he fought for access to the state’s president.

Bohdan himself is proud to have persuaded Zelensky to run for president. While still an advisor to Ihor Kolomoisky, who was head of the Dnipropetrovsk ODA (Regional State Administration), Bohdan suggested that the artistic director of Kvartal 95 Studio run in the special election in the precinct in which Borys Filatov (who left the post to become a mayor) had won back in 2015. However, at that point Zelensky refused.

At that time, Bohdan, who graduated from the Law School of Lviv State University (where his father, Yosyp Hnatovych, was an associate professor in the department of civil law and procedure), had already worked for the Western Railroad under the famous Heorhiy Kirpa. When the latter was appointed minister of transportation, Bohdan moved to Kyiv. He was a lawyer, deputy minister of justice, an advisor to the people’s deputy of Ukraine Andriy Portnov, on a voluntary basis, and a government commissioner for anti-corruption policy. Bohdan ran twice for the Verkhovna Rada – in 2007 for the Our Ukraine: The People’s Self-Defense Party and in 2014 from the BPP (Petro Poroshenko Bloc). However, he never made it to Parliament. In the first case, his position on the party list was not high enough to make it through. In the second, “Bohdan’s law,” passed in February 2016, became an obstacle. It allowed party leaders to exclude candidates from the voter lists after the election.

According to Serhiy Leshchenko, a former people’s deputy from the BPP, the law was passed specifically to prevent Bohdan, then a lawyer for businessman Hennadiy Korban, from joining the Verkhovna Rada.

As Bohdan himself remembers it, in 2017, while visiting the Vatican, he wrote a humorous post on social media: “I talked to the Pope. He told me that Volodymyr Zelensky would be president.” “Of course, it was a joke, but I studied sociology, which taught that society needs new faces,” the former head of the Office of the President said to Dmytro Gordon on September 9, 2020.

A year before the presidential election, Bohdan met with Zelensky and encouraged him to run for president. All this time Bohdan worked with Ihor Kolomoisky and his Privat Banking Group. So it needs to be remembered that Bohdan was the link that connected Kolomoisky and Zelensky. Even before his presidency, Bohdan had accompanied Zelensky on his trips to Geneva and Tel Aviv, where the Ukrainian oligarch lived.

But, whatever the case, in 2018 Andriy Bohdan became one of Volodymyr Zelensky’s confidants. He was much more knowledgeable about Ukrainian politics than the presidential candidate himself. The personal lawyer of the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and the businessman Hennadiy Korban, Bohdan worked in government and had intimate knowledge of all the intrigues, which seemed to be exactly what the political neophyte, the artistic director of Kvartal 95 Studio, needed.

Bohdan seemed to be pursuing a personal agenda in becoming part of Zelensky’s team. He wanted to prove to Petro Poroshenko that the latter should not have filed criminal cases against him and should not have removed him from his party list. Nevertheless, he says that he no longer bears a grudge against Poroshenko and speaks with irony about the seat in Parliament that he never took. As it happens, regarding Bohdan’s lawsuit in October 2019, the court overturned the decision to exclude him from the BPP list. He has known Poroshenko since 2004, when he worked in the legal department of the Our Ukraine Party during Yushchenko’s presidential campaign.

It should be noted that during the 2019 presidential campaign, Bohdan, like Zelensky, avoided excessive publicity. He appeared on TV several times, but that was all. Still, it was Bohdan who stood next to Zelensky whispering something in his ear during the debate with Poroshenko at the Olympic Stadium. It is this image of Bohdan constantly prompting Zelensky that will remain with people for a long time. He would, after all, perceive Zelensky’s victory in the election as his own.

I observed something similar in July 1994 after Leonid Kuchma’s victory. At that time, Dmytro Tabachnyk, who would later become head of the Office of the President, was as proud as a peacock. Tabachnyk, like Bohdan, did not behave himself – he would interrupt the president in conversation with others, whisper into Kuchma’s ear, or simply demonstrate that he was, if not the first person in the state, then at least the second. Pride and arrogance led Tabachnyk to resign as head of the Office of the President. Bohdan walked the same path.

In the early months of his presidency, Zelensky could not manage without Bohdan. To keep him close by, Zelensky even changed the name of the administration to the Office of the President (because otherwise, Bohdan, under lustration because of his work for Yanukovych’s team, could not run the presidential office). Bohdan was Zelensky’s constant companion wherever he went – on business as well as private trips. He was with him at factories, sports events, and concerts. Everywhere.

He took selfies with the Zelenskys at Niagara Falls and, separately, of himself in swimming trunks, with Zelensky on the Langeron beach in Odesa. He provided the president with answers to the most difficult questions and advised him on personnel decisions. It seemed that Bohdan’s strength and omnipotence could be surpassed by no one. This opinion was shared by the head of the Office of the President himself, who, when in public, granted himself more and more power than was appropriate. In summer 2019, the Office of the President allowed information about the resignation statement, allegedly written by Andriy Bohdan himself, to be “leaked” to the media. Hundreds of media outlets, citing their own sources, wrote about it. And then it turned out that, by doing this, the Office of the President had pulled the wool over the eyes of journalists, whom Bohdan himself called nothing but “zhurna … liukhy,” a blend of “journalists and whores.” Moreover, Bohdan overtly stated that the president did not need journalists to communicate with the public.

Then there were conflicts between the head of the Office of the President and the mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klitschko, telephone conversations with the then director of the DBR (State Bureau of Investigation) Roman Truba, which were later leaked to the Internet, posts along the line of “Boredom” on his Facebook page, and many other of Bohdan’s antics that no one could explain.

Already in autumn 2019, rumors of reducing Bohdan’s influence and strengthening the position of another Andriy – Yermak – in Zelensky’s coterie were circulating on the political sidelines. The head of the Office of the President obviously understood perfectly well that he was being pushed out of Bankova Street. But he still hoped this would not happen. In December 2019, Zelensky offered Bohdan the position of prosecutor general. But he refused it. “At that time, our internal misunderstandings reached a climax and he made it clear that he did not mind if I took a different job,” Bohdan recalls.

However, in January 2020 it became clear that Yermak was shoring up his position with the president. Because it was he, not Bohdan, who flew with Zelensky to Oman. Afterward, he was in charge of negotiations with Iran following the downing of the Ukrainian Boeing passenger jet. And Yermak, not Bohdan, was negotiating with Moscow.

On February 11, 2020, President Zelensky officially fired Andriy Bohdan. The day before, the two had put an end to their relationship, deciding to go their separate ways in politics. Zelensky told Bohdan that he treated him like an unloved wife. He said, as the former head of the Office of the President later reported it: “I don’t know what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, but you’re making me angry no matter what you do.”

Four months later, Zelensky would say that Bohdan, being the de facto vice-president, showed power where it was not needed, and generally created conflict among the team. In response, Bohdan wrote on Facebook:

Dear Volodymyr Oleksandrovych, I wanted to respond to your interview.

The rules of business ethics do not allow decent people to comment on their joint activities, even if these people have split up. Of course, this rule is often violated in Ukraine, and I, as a lawyer, including yours, can tell and have told you hundreds of stories about how it ends (which never does any good).

Of course, I am a bearer of knowledge that is very sensitive for you and for the country, but believe me, I will always be a decent person.

As for depriving me of power, I am so grateful to you, because my name will not be related to the chaos into which you are throwing...