Three nominees for Kyiv Mayor post from ruling party to compete in primaries

Three members of the ruling Servant of the People Party, namely Mykola Tyshchenko, Oleksandr Dubinskyi, and Oleksandr Kachura, will take part in the party's primaries ahead of the mayoral elections in Kyiv, says the newly appointed Ukrainian Minister of Culture and Information Policy, Oleksandr Tkachenko.

"Three people have already agreed [to take part in the primaries], namely Tyshchenko, Dubinskyi, and Kachura. It seems to me that this should be the one who can defeat the incumbent mayor and help make the Servants of the People faction in the Kyiv City Council the largest and most influential one," he told the Ukrainian online publication Livyi Bereh on June 9.

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As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier said that the primaries among potential candidates from the ruling party, Servant of the People, prior to the mayoral elections in Kyiv, would be held in two stages.

"One person will become [a nominee for] mayor from the Servant of the People Party. They [members of the party] wanted to hold primaries, and that's a normal thing. There will be internal primaries in the Servant of the People Party, which will involve not just people from the party," Zelensky said.

Over 40% of respondents are ready to vote for the incumbent mayor of Kyiv, according to a study by the Sociological Monitoring Center. In turn, only a candidate from the Servant of the People Party may compete with Klitschko, the poll suggests. A total of 26.5% of respondents are ready to vote for a mayoral candidate from the ruling party "Servant of the People".