Ukrainian David Copperfield. The Incredible Tricks of Arakhamia
The European Union provides financial support to Ukraine for implementing reforms. In order for the state budget to receive it, the Verkhovna Rada must vote for the relevant laws included in the special list of the Ukraine Facility program. This is an opportunity to receive 50 billion euros from 2024 to 2027. Each reform literally has its price. A failed vote in the session hall can mean a delay in securing budget financing.
In addition, the EU recently approved changes to the Ukraine Facility support mechanism. The changes foresee the inclusion of an additional 8.3 billion euros in funding this year. These funds will be provided through the Ukraine Support Loan mechanism — an EU support tool for Ukraine totaling up to 90 billion euros for this and the coming year. Specifically, Ukraine must fulfill additional obligations in the areas of the rule of law and anti-corruption.
The biggest saboteur of the Ukraine Facility plan’s implementation is “Batkivshchyna”. Yulia Tymoshenko’s team may not only ignore the voting but also vote against it. Notably, environmental issues included in the Ukraine Facility program did not receive a single vote from them.
Since 2023, the ruling faction has not once provided the 226 votes needed for draft laws to take effect. NGO “Holka” wrote about this in the first part of the study prepared for the parliament’s seven years of work. But the paradox is that the faction leader, Davyd Arakhamia, managed to build a hybrid model — a situational coalition that delivers the desired result at the right moment. As the media reported, Volodymyr Zelenskyy personally “prayed away” [saved] Arakhamia from suspicion in the high-profile “Midas” case. One of the reasons is that he is indispensable in the Verkhovna Rada.
Data confirms that the opposition most frequently helps fulfill European integration obligations; former representatives of the pro-Russian OPZZh provide votes for personnel changes; “Dovira” maximally props up economic issues; and when there is a shortage of votes, barter voting can be negotiated with the “Za Maibutnie” parliamentary group.
The information partner of the project “Recharging the Country is in Your Power” is “Glavkom”.
For introducing reforms, Ukraine can receive funds from international partners that help support the country’s economy during the war and are distributed across three directions: state budget support (slightly over €38 billion), the formation of an investment fund (slightly under €10 billion), and government assistance for synchronizing national legislation with EU legislation (slightly under €5 billion).
Ukraine’s success in meeting these indicators is tracked on a special platform — the Ukraine Facility Plan, which contains a list of reforms. Basic reforms cover anti-corruption, judicial reform, public administration, and public finance management, alongside economic and sectoral development reforms (energy sector, transport and logistics, etc.).
Progress of the implementation of the Ukraine Plan. Data from the Ministry of Economy from the Ukraine Facility Plan website.
The ruling party has not given the minimally required 226 votes for any law signed by the President since 2023. When it comes to laws from the Ukraine Facility, “Servant of the People” provides approximately 80% of votes based on the number of faction members. Most often, the “Dovira” parliamentary group saves the situation — giving almost 75% of the votes based on its member count.
An analysis of voting on laws aimed at fulfilling this plan proves that it is “Batkivshchyna” that sabotages the voting. While for all other issues the faction gives 35% of votes “for”, for the 41 laws corresponding to this plan, it gave less than 17%. Moreover, it is the only political force that openly opposes European integration reforms, casting 7.4% of the faction’s votes “against” draft laws from the Ukraine Facility instrument list.
“Batkivshchyna” MPs cast the highest number of “against” votes regarding the anti-corruption law on the detection, tracing, and management of assets derived from corruption and other crimes, as well as the draft law on mineral regulation. In both cases — 14 votes each.
The “Batkivshchyna” members did not cast a single vote for laws needed to implement the Ukraine Facility Plan when they concerned environmental protection. And there might be an explanation for this. At the local level, party representatives have figured in a series of scandals involving illegal land allocation.
WWF-Ukraine representative Yaroslav Teleshun notes that a significant part of Ukraine’s obligations to the EU is related to environmental protection and, simultaneously, to minimizing corruption risks:
In the context of anti-corruption safeguards and environmental protection, one cannot help but mention the fact that Yulia Tymoshenko’s faction hardly provided any votes when, following last year’s citizen protests and warnings from international partners, the parliament was forced to restore the independence of anti-corruption agencies NABU and SAPO. The party leader stated from the rostrum:
During these debates in parliament, Tymoshenko’s position was booed by representatives of “European Solidarity,” prompting “Batkivshchyna” member Serhiy Vlasenko to show an indecent gesture to Petro Poroshenko.
Vlasenko shows the “middle finger” gesture to Petro Poroshenko, who booed Tymoshenko’s speech regarding NABU and SAPO.
As for “European Solidarity”, their faction’s support during the consideration of the Ukraine Facility Plan depends on the subject of the draft law. On average, ES provides 37.6% of the votes. Business-related draft laws receive the least support, while environmental protection projects enjoy the most. In those cases, support can increase to 75%.
Member of Parliament from “European Solidarity” Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, who heads the Committee on Ukraine’s Integration into the EU, notes that to strengthen partners’ trust, Ukraine still needs to meet a series of requirements:
It is important to note that regarding the Anti-Corruption Strategy, questions arise not only for the Government and the Verkhovna Rada but also for the NACP, as they are the ones who missed the deadlines for drafting the document. The Law “On Corruption Prevention” obliged the Agency to develop the strategy by August 1 of last year, but the document only reached the Cabinet of Ministers at the beginning of this year (Article 18).
The loss of 2.3 billion euros due to non-fulfillment of the Ukraine Facility Plan indicators. Graphic from the presentation on the Resilience, Reconstruction and Relief for Ukraine consortium website.
It is worth recalling here that when the National Agency on Corruption Prevention was working on the draft Anti-Corruption Strategy, “Holka” uncovered a number of corruption risks in the “Construction” section, which was prepared, in part, by the assistants of the former head of the “Servant of the People” party, Olena Shuliak. These risks in the draft strategy have currently been minimized.
Member of Parliament Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze reminds us that similar risks existed when Shuliak lobbied for the urban planning “reform” 5655:
And while with the urban planning “reform,” both the civic sector and international partners were able to identify and stop the risks in time, this is not always the case. Under the guise of fulfilling the requirements of the Ukraine Facility Plan, norms that actually worsen the situation of citizens or create new loopholes for the authorities can be embedded in a draft law.
For example, during the analysis of the draft law “On the Basic Principles of Housing Policy,” expert Heorhiy Mohylnyi discovered that the document’s provisions foresee the cancellation of the joint obligation of the state and local self-government bodies to provide free housing, with subsequent privatization, to those waiting in the apartment queue. At the same time, the Ukraine Facility Plan did not envision such changes. Even according to conservative estimates by Minregion, this involves writing off over 900 billion UAH in state and local government obligations to citizens.
At the same time, in the accompanying documentation, Minregion and the head of the Committee on the Organization of State Power and Local Self-Government, Olena Shuliak, claimed that the adoption of this draft by the end of 2025 is necessary specifically to fulfill obligations under the Ukraine Facility plan.
Olena Shuliak’s statement on the necessity of adopting the housing reform as part of the Ukraine Facility Plan. Screenshot from the “Servant of the People” party website.
The same happened with the abolition of the Commercial Code, which was lobbied for by Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk (Draft No. 6013). The adopted law essentially opens opportunities for the largest redistribution of state property through non-privatization methods since Ukraine’s independence. Meanwhile, the Verkhovna Rada failed to provide proper protection against the privatization of strategic enterprises, as required by the Constitution.
In addition to the Ukraine Facility Plan, there is another important list for the international community — the so-called Kachka-Kos plan. The document is named as such because former Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Taras Kachka and European Commissioner Marta Kos worked on the agreements between Ukraine and the EU. This is a document of ten points that must be fulfilled throughout this year, but as of July, Ukraine had only managed to implement this plan by 15%.
“Servant of the People” remains the backbone of the parliament. On average, the faction provides 207 votes “for,” which is not enough to pass a law. Notably, after Dmytro Razumkov formed his inter-factional association “Smart Politics,” it has negatively impacted the voting situation within the “Servant of the People” faction since 2022 because Razumkov’s group started attending meetings less frequently.
Therefore, the authorities have to gather votes from other factions and parliamentary groups. And here, everything depends on what exactly the Verkhovna Rada is voting on.
To understand who really helps a draft law become a law, “Holka” counted not just the number of “for” votes from each faction or group, but introduced two concepts — auxiliary and decisive votes.
If any faction or group, along with other factions or groups, helped “Servant of the People” cross the 226-vote threshold, such votes are recorded as auxiliary.
That is, a single law can have several such auxiliary groups if, without the votes of each of them individually, 226 cannot be reached. This indicator demonstrates how many times a faction or group was a necessary part of the majority, but it does not mean it alone “pushed through” the law.
The “Dovira” group most often helps the mono-majority with auxiliary votes. It has 77 auxiliary votes to its credit. Interestingly, if you add together the fragments of the banned OPZZh party — namely the parliamentary groups “Restoration of Ukraine” and “Platform for Life and Peace” — there were more auxiliary votes here than from “Dovira” (105). And during the war, the tandem of “Servant of the People” and the remnants of OPZZh, as the data show, has only strengthened.
But the votes of a certain political force may not be auxiliary, but decisive. This happens when, if you remove the votes of one faction or group, the result falls below 226. That is, the draft law would never have become a law without these specific votes.
For example, the law “On the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine” received a total of 242 votes, and here “Dovira” provided 17 votes. If you subtract this number from the total, the difference is 225 — one vote short of what is required for passage. “Dovira” is the absolute leader in the number of decisive votes: it accounts for 15 laws passed in this manner.
It should be noted that both “Dovira” and the fragments of OPZZh help when it comes to personnel issues. And special attention should be paid to the fact that there are MPs elected from the pro-Russian OPZZh party who, after the full-scale invasion, are trying to whitewash their reputations and vigorously vote in unison with the “Servants of the People.” The top 5 include Serhiy Larin, Oleksandr Kachnyi, Serhiy Liovochkin, Ihor Kisiliov, and Oleksandr Puzanov.
And there is a third metric that determines the strength of votes in an authority body (the Banzhaf index). This methodology was proposed by John Banzhaf III, who applied this mathematical approach in the 1960s to analyze voting in a U.S. community.
While decisive votes show how many times a faction or group actually saved a specific law, the Banzhaf index works differently: it shows how structurally important a faction is for decision-making overall, regardless of how often it actually does so.
That is, a small faction or parliamentary group can have a significant impact if, without it, the required number of votes is simply not reached. Conversely, the votes of a large faction do not always give it proportional influence: if the threshold can be crossed without it, its additional votes become insignificant.
Calculated across voting topics, the Banzhaf index shows not just who gave how many votes, but who is the most influential player in a specific field. While “Dovira” leads in the total number of decisive votes (excluding the “Servants of the People”), according to the Banzhaf index, “European Solidarity” unexpectedly takes second place. This faction becomes structurally important exactly when it comes to European integration issues, ratification of international agreements, security, or social laws — meaning it has a clear thematic specialization of influence.
But the most interesting part is that it was the Banzhaf index that allowed “Holka” to uncover possible barter voting by the “Za Maibutnie” parliamentary group. Politicians from this group are linked to Kolomoiskyi’s group. The group’s representatives rarely provide a significant number of votes. Instead, their support spikes sharply in situations showing signs of a situational exchange of votes: the group may back a decision needed by the authorities if, in return, it receives support for an issue important to it.
A telling example is the vote for “Budget-2026”. Opposition factions “European Solidarity” and “Holos” did not support the draft budget. Therefore, “Za Maibutnie” essentially held a golden share — the ruling party heavily relied on their votes. But the government’s draft budget contained a mechanism designed to minimize the financial consequences of “Ihor Mazepa’s law”. According to this law, if 10 years have passed, neither the community nor the state can reclaim green zones, coastlines, or cultural heritage sites. And if 10 years have not yet passed, a deposit equivalent to the market value of the object must be paid into the court’s account from the budget. In order for the funds for such deposits to appear in the budget, they had to be envisioned in the state budget. Given that there are no funds during wartime, the government drafted the 2026 budget to try to delay the implementation of this harmful law.
And this is where a revealing convergence of interests arises. To block the government’s attempt to protect both budget funds and state property, amendments appeared in the draft budget that had identical authors: the head of the “Servant of the People” faction Davyd Arakhamia, Ihor Fris, and the co-chair of the “Za Maibutnie” parliamentary group Taras Batenko. It was Fris who was one of the key authors of “Ihor Mazepa’s law”, and Batenko and Fris have previously been linked by the media to Kolomoiskyi’s informal group, which benefits from such legalization of property stolen from the state.
So, in this case, it is not just a coincidence of votes. There is a shared interest, joint authorship of amendments, and the group’s votes depend on the passage of the decision it needs.
Analysis of MPs’ voting shows that the Ukrainian parliament is effectively operating in a situational majority mode. The head of the “Servant of the People” faction, Davyd Arakhamia, builds partnerships differently every time: “Dovira” for economic issues or, like the remnants of OPZZh, for personnel decisions; “European Solidarity” for a portion of reforms and European integration laws. And when votes are desperately tight, a barter can be arranged with “Za Maibutnie.”
The head of the “Dovira” parliamentary group, Oleh Kulinich, asserts that a genuine coalition is currently impossible, and therefore the Verkhovna Rada will continue working in the format of a situational coalition:
Under such conditions, “Servant of the People” really has no need to form a broad coalition. Especially since ES and “Holos” are their political opponents, and, according to the Constitution, a coalition can only be built with factions, not parliamentary groups. Therefore, the fragments of the former OPZZh or the “Dovira” group cannot become an official part of the coalition unless individual deputies decide to join the ruling party faction, which carries reputational risks.
A model resting on situational agreements is capable of passing decisions. But it does not leave behind anyone who would take responsibility for the country’s course if something goes wrong.
The study on the parliament’s work was created based on open data, which was systematized in a digital service as part of the “Recharging the Country is in Your Power” project, supported by the NED.
Anyone can gain access to the digital service containing the systematized data by sending an email requesting access to ngo.holka@gmail.com.
“Glavkom” acts as the information partner of the project.
