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28 I Cover story bne July 2018
his assistant Konstantin Kilimnik, one day later. His mission was to bolster Yanukovych’s decision to go for Europe. Cox and Kwasnievski arrived in Crimea on the same day as Manafort. On the morning of July 30, they were scheduled to meet with Yanukovych in Crimea for another session on Tymoshenko’s fate. Kwasniewski said Manafort did not meet with the monitoring mission in Crimea that day.
But as the pace of events quickened in summer and autumn 2013, Manafort had a series of one-to-one meetings with Kwasniewski in Warsaw, the former Pol- ish president acknowledged.
These culminated in Manafort flying to Warsaw on October 18 – on Lovochkin’s plane – to meet Kwasniewski. Later the same day Yanukovych said he would
be ready to let Tymoshenko depart
to Germany for treatment, as soon as Ukraine’s parliament passed legislation enabling this.
The Firtash connection
The private jet flights and personal con- nections show that Manafort’s supervi- sor in this lobbying effort was Yanu- kovych’s chief of staff Lovochkin.
Lovochkin said that he had also “always been a strong supporter of the European integration of Ukraine.” Kwasniewski confirmed that Lovochkin was in the pro-EU camp.
Yulia Lovochkina acknowledged owning the executive jet business that oper- ated the planes Manafort flew on. “Its services were open to everyone on the market,” she said. She also acknowl- edged flying with Manafort to the Rome conference on one of the planes. She “paid for the ticket herself and had her own agenda for the trip,” she said.
Lovochkin is the junior partner of bil- lionaire oligarch Dmytro Firtash, who had made his fortune trading gas via notorious company Rosukrenergo, that allegedly skimmed off hundreds of millions of dollars for the Russian and Ukrainian elite. Lovochkin and Firtash together also controlled Ukraine’s larg- est TV channel, Inter.
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Manafort’s continued participation in post-Yanukovych Ukraine also points to his ties to Lovochkin and Firtash. While most members of the Yanukovych admin- istration fled to Russia or were arrested after February 2014, Lovochkin has con- tinued his political career with impunity, despite having served at the heart of Yanukovych’s regime for four years.
Post Yanukovych’s ousting, Manafort may have attended top-level Ukrainian political meetings where the oligarchs decided who would govern.
On March 25 he flew out of Vienna to Kyiv. His visit to Vienna had coincided with a crucial meeting between Petro Poroshenko and Vienna-based Firtash in that city. Lovochkin had also attended the meeting at which Firtash agreed to back Poroshenko for the post of presi- dent, rather than former boxer Vitaly Klichko, effectively crowning Porosh- enko president.
In November 13, 2014, as details of a new government were being hammered out after the parliamentary elections, the flight data records that Manafort flew from Kyiv to Nice, France, on a private jet with Ihor Tarasiuk, the busi- ness partner of Poroshenko’s first deputy chief of staff, Yuri Kosiuk. Tarasiuk denied taking the flight, although he confirmed the personal data provided was correct.
Manafort’s Ukraine engagements actually increased following Yanukovych’s ouster in February 2014. In March to June 2014, he spent a total of 27 days in Ukraine, whereas during the four preceding Euro- maidan months, November-February 2014, Manafort only visited Ukraine three times for a total of nine days.
According to the Mueller indictment, Manafort was engaged as lobbyist for Lovochkin’s new party Opposition Bloc, widely regarded as funded by Firtash. This explains Manafort’s long stays in Ukraine during the post-Maidan elec- tion campaigns, according to the flight data: one week prior to the presidential elections in May 2014, and one month prior to the parliamentary elections in October 2014.
Manafort’s flight data concludes with a four-week stay in Ukraine through to Octo- ber 27, 2015. This period coincides with the campaign for regional elections, which cemented Lovochkin’s Opposition Bloc as
a dominant force across south and east Ukraine. Only months after the close of electioneering in conflict-wracked Ukraine, Manafort was electioneering in the US, on behalf of the controversial candidate for the world’s most powerful office.
Maidan mystery
Manafort’s flight data sheds no light however on his relationship, if any, to the Euromaidan revolution. Euromaidan was triggered by events in Kyiv on the night of November 29, when police vio- lently dispersed a small demonstration of pro-EU students who were protesting after Yanukovych refused to sign the Association Agreement. The violence prompted a demonstration occupying the heart of Kyiv on December 1.
All we have are cryptic messages exchanged between Manafort’s daughters, one
of whose phones was hacked in 2016. Manafort confirmed the hack and corrobo- rated some of the messages to Politico.
According to messages between the sisters discussing Manafort’s actions in Ukraine, it was Manafort’s idea “to send those people out and get them slaughtered. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that Revolts [sic] and what not [...] As a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine.” Manafort’s daughter called her father’s money “blood money.”
The remarks were made by those privy to the deepest secrets of Manafort’s per- sonal life. They evoke the suspicion that Manafort and Lovochkin manipulated the Maidan protests and the police vio- lence for his masters’ ends – to influence international opinion.
The appearance of the Manafort messages in 2016 reignited speculation in Ukraine that the trigger of the mass protests – the violent dispersal of the students’ dem- onstration on November 29, 2013 – was instigated by Lovochkin. The alleged goal: to trigger outrage against Yanukovych.
Some of the timeline fits this interpreta-