Crisis manager Maksym Bakhmatov: If Zelensky is offered $10 billion or a successful country, he will choose the successful country

He believes an unprofessional president is better than an experienced "commerce man," because the latter always chooses money.

In a new episode of the Antipody program on the Iceland TV channel, Transformation Office head and crisis manager Maksym Bakhmatov spoke about the current state of the Ukrainian capital, the development and collapse of Ukrainian Comedy Club, and his attitude toward President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Please describe the state the capital is in today in one, at most two words.

Crap. The worst place, third in Europe for traffic jams, 174th place for ecology. You could name five problems on the level of Chornobyl, but nobody in Kyiv thinks about it, because they are slow. After Chornobyl it became frightening, very dangerous, and death within an hour and a half, and here it is developing like this, for example the Radikal plant. 

All right, you said "crap." The word crap has five letters and five problems, you said, on the level of Chornobyl. Let's decode this "crap." Number one.

Traffic jams. Number one is our time, our money, ecology, discomfort of life, the lack of any ability to plan anything, it is a collapse. Today the average speed of movement is 17 kilometers per hour. The most cynical thing is that before I came to deal with this problem, two years ago, nobody even understood its scale.

So I invited an international company that measures traffic around the world. It began measuring this problem together with other indicators in Kyiv, and it turned out that our crap is clearly measurable. 

I am hearing for the first time that there is such an indicator that measures traffic speed. 17 kilometers? 

Today the average speed of movement in Kyiv is 17 kilometers. 

And is there a trend that it is somehow slowing down?

Yes, we are falling, and in two years it could be, for example, 11 kilometers. And then walking will be faster. I am not joking, it is absolutely not a joke. Right now I live in Pozniaky, and since two lanes of the Southern Bridge were closed, my commute to work takes forty minutes. This is not rush hour, it is half past nine, ten.

To which district of Kyiv?

I drive to Tarasivska. You need to remember that the Southern Bridge carries 90% of all transit of the whole country, from the left bank to the right and from the right to the left. The nearest cities are Kremenchuk or Cherkasy, nobody wants to go there, everyone drives through Kyiv. All the transit, all the trucks, all this mess goes there.

One question is the left and right bank, the second question is the city center. The city center was built back in the times of Kyivan Rus. And nobody is going to rebuild it. And it is impossible to rebuild it. All those fantastic stories about hyperloops, tunnels, it is all three, five, ten billion dollars. There is no such money. Nobody will give such money, forget about it, you cannot afford it.

So, we can only physically stop traffic. Move people to alternative means of transport. If we measure the red metro line, we will understand that it is already overloaded. That is, it is already unable to carry this and will not be able to in the future. And if we want to build new metro stations, we must remember that one new metro station is 100 million dollars.

And we do not have money for these metro stations. In eight years not a single one has been built, precisely because there is simply no money to build them. So we must think about what will happen in 5, 10, 15 years, taking into account that more and more people keep arriving in the city of Kyiv. And we must offer some alternative. Such alternatives exist, they are offered by the World Bank, German partners, Chinese ones. That is, people have gone through all of this.

A hundred years ago Chicago already had a light metro, because they had already calculated it, they had no money, but before that they wrote a plan, investors chipped in, and they wrote a development plan for Chicago for a hundred years, and today it is 80% fulfilled. Second. The Bortnytska aeration station. All the poop of the city of Kyiv floats there.

Today it is 90% worn out, and if something happens, roughly 50% to 80% of Ukraine will feel it. Down the Dnipro. Because all of Kyiv's poop will float down the Dnipro. And there is the Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy, Kremenchuk, Kakhovka. And all of it will be there, it will be polluted. The ecological catastrophe will be on such a scale that it will almost be visible to everyone.

Five years, a billion dollars has been allocated for the reconstruction of this station. It is a special loan from the Japanese government. It helps countries in need, and ours qualifies. A loan for forty years at one or two percent, that is, it is essentially free. Just do it. But we have very strict requirements. Guys, stealing is not allowed, tenders are strict, we control it, our engineers, because you idiots could steal everything. 

So did this money arrive? 

No, it did not arrive, they are holding it and saying, go through the procedure, guarantee it, roughly 10 or 15 percent must be financed either by the authorities or by Kyiv. They tell me, you at least have to give something. It was precisely under this loan that the Boryspil airport was rebuilt.

Also the Japanese loan, 500 million. I talked with a Japanese engineer, he was very sad, because he has to comply with all Ukrainian regulations and at the same time control that Ukrainian contractors do not steal, and at the same time he has to guarantee to the people who gave this money, the Japanese government, that everything will be okay. And he was very sad. But the reconstruction happened, and it is a really cool airport, a really existing one. 

So this is advantageous for us?

Very advantageous. For such huge infrastructure projects it is very advantageous. 

You worked with Klitschko for a long time. What is wrong with Klitschko? 

Look, before I started working for Klitschko, I gave many interviews. I was asked, what is going on there, how is Kyiv, how do you evaluate Klitschko? Later all these interviews were thrown in my face: how can you work with Klitschko, you're basically going along with him? I believe Klitschko is a kind of gray stability for Kyiv. Like these walls. But it is such potential... was, I can say that now. Was. For Kyiv. For the country, I don't know, but for Kyiv it certainly was. 

In what sense, please explain. 

The brand he embodies carries a positive reputation, which, potentially, as a manager, a simple manager, I understand, can be turned into a very large multiplier. And show Ukraine and the world how it should be done. Because all kinds of people gravitate toward him: investors, politicians. He is a charmer. He is a world boxing champion. He is a politician, but none of this is connected to efficiency or management.

Plus he does not understand how to build a team like that, probably because he came from a sport where you do not need to build a team. You are on your own. You are either strong and you win, or you are weak. And basically it does not matter who your masseur, manager, financier, driver is, there is no difference. You win on your own, and you are a stud, or not.

So he organically tried to do something. I give you one hundred percent that he tried to do it. Even my example, that is also an attempt. I am not connected to anyone corruptly, I am certainly not a gray cardinal, nor a man of Kolomoisky, I am telling you honestly, certainly not. 

So for him it was a knowingly unpopular story that brought him no benefit at all?

He tried and endeavored together with me, we invented this story that his right hand, it is better not to fall under the right one, all these stories. But I did not know, and he probably forgot, or did not want to say, that a system without radical changes and "surgical shootings" cannot create anything better. Something good, something about what we want to talk with you about regarding Kyiv.

So... yes, they do things overall, but efficiency, I think, is dozens of times lower than it should be. I will stay silent about corruption, because corruption must be proven. Yes, we know, they steal, steal, steal. And a lot is stolen, a hundred searches have taken place. Really, a hundred searches. Forty suspicions, fifteen criminal cases. This has nothing to do with efficiency. Efficiency you can increase many times over in a single day.

You can fire the rabble, you can appoint normal people, you can analyze their activity, you can measure their KPIs. You can in general find out what the city needs, force those officials who make decisions about those 64 billion to make them only after you get data, analyze that data, give it to experts, have experts analyze it, agree with the community, and only then make decisions about billions of hryvnias. But everything happens the other way around.

You subjectively make decisions about what to do: a road, a kindergarten, it makes no difference. And all of this starts to affect everything that is happening now. From traffic to ecology. And I am now talking about hard solutions, but there are also soft solutions. The quality of education, the quality of medical care, the number of deaths, the number of people who engage in sports, and all of this is connected to the number of deaths, to spending on medicine, ecology. There is none of that.

The number of officials, the number of communal enterprises that are not needed at all. 90% you can simply cancel, and you will not even see the difference, whether they existed or not. As far as I am concerned, as a Kyivan, as a shareholder of the city of Kyiv, it is important to me where this money goes and why it goes there. What is this circus for? One and a half thousand communal enterprises.

And we discussed all of this with Mr. Klitschko. He understood all of it, knew it. And at the moment when tough, real decisions had to be made, for example the suspicion against Povoroznyk, a 125 thousand dollar bribe in the office, well, okay. A brawl with a police officer, another deputy, well, okay. Someone has a critical health story, something else, something else. That's it. Automatically, there are no deputies.

He should have said: okay, we restart the whole team, we bring in new people, here is Bakhmatov for you. If you don't want Bakhmatov, here is someone else for you. Go do politics for yourself. No problem. If you want to be president, you have to show an amazing city. But not talk about how amazing the city is, but show it through real cases.

When I met with the mobile operators who could not implement 4G for eight years. I ask, and they say: we cannot. They say everything there is built in such a way that it is a restricted facility and you are not allowed into the metro to work there. You can only work there for an hour and a half a day.

And then people come and say: dude, we already have the whole network. Buy it from us for 20 million dollars. They say, we did this once already in 2002 and bought a 2G network. From the very same people. That is, this is not corruption where you steal money, you simply do not allow the city to develop. When I started dealing with this, within three months we launched the first metro station.

Well, first of all, I got calls from everyone, you cannot even imagine from whom. They said: don't interfere, it won't work, we have been doing this for three years. Luckily I had experts from the Huawei operators, and I asked: is this true? It is bullshit (lies). We will do everything in three months, just give us the opportunity to work. And that is it, within three months everything was switched on. 

And who was calling? What level of people?

Former ministers, deputy prime ministers, former deputies, but not Klitschko's, Popova too. Well, everyone together. Everyone who was once part of the scheme. I talked with Klitschko, I said, Vitaliy Volodymyrovych, now they will be calling you, anyone at all, and if we do not do this, there will be a scandal thirty-five times bigger. He says: okay, fine. Will you do it? I say, I will do it. And I understand that if this is happening in the capital, in the regions it is roughly the same, plus or minus. 

But you did name cities where supposedly things are different.

Different in terms of management efficiency.

Well, that depends on the team.

Of course. 

So that is Klitschko's main shortcoming, as far as I understand, the inability to form a team?

Yes. You can look, and you will not even remember anyone, except Povoroznyk, who was caught. You learned about him only after he was caught taking a bribe. Before that you did not even know him. Yes, building a team and managing effectively is a separate art. 

And Klitschko, unfortunately, does not possess it?

The feeling is that no. And the feeling is that forming this team for Kyiv will no longer succeed. Regarding Ukraine we will see, there are, apparently, plans of "Udar" to go into parliament, probably there will be plans for Vitaliy Volodymyrovych to go into presidency. Well, I would not want to comment on that, because I am not Vitaliy Volodymyrovych. 

Right now Klitschko is in such a clinch with the presidential office. He is supposedly being left only with the position of mayor, by appointing a head of the Kyiv City State Administration to him, that is, to another post that he combines.

And there are such narratives that we will appoint precisely an effective manager, some purely technocrat. First, how correct will that be, second, I immediately ask, how much will it actually distort the choice of Kyivans, which they made one way or another, and third, how likely is it?

When someone told me that this is impossible in Kyiv, when I was working on some projects, we agreed with Vitaliy Volodymyrovych that we would go together with him and dance the dance of impotents on the Maidan. Holding hands, dancing. Because we cannot. Something is not working right now for the Kyiv authorities. Now the central authorities are trying to change something, conducting searches and trying to show that everything is corrupt, everything is inefficient, all of them are goats, and we are great. 

But searches will not improve the air quality, though.

First, I hope they understand there that this story is only for the long run. You cannot do it in two weeks just like that. Second, if you screw up and do not finish it to the end, then both sides must go to the Maidan and dance the dance of impotents. Because if it turns out that all of Klitschko's people and Klitschko are great guys and nobody goes to prison and everyone is great...

And they were simply not allowed to finish, to complete all the good deeds.

Well, of course. That is exactly what will happen. And so, the choice of Kyivans, whatever it may be. That means Kyivans like standing in traffic jams, drinking dirty water, breathing air and so on. Personally, as a manager, I say once again, I believe that the situation must be changed radically. I believe that central authority cannot be weak in the capital.

I believe there must be cooperation between the mayor and the central authorities, because all infrastructure projects, from the Great Ring Road to the construction of bridges, are impossible without central money. The whole country uses Kyiv, and since it is the whole country, let part of state money flow into Kyiv. 50% of all cars in Kyiv are not Kyiv.

That is, when there was the first big lockdown in March of last year. And when everything was simply switched off. Kyiv went quiet, because instead of a million cars a day, only six hundred thousand remained in the system. And I could move around Kyiv in 20 minutes, anywhere. Because neither the region nor anyone else was driving into Kyiv.

If conceptually in terms of efficiency, then we need to help Mr. Klitschko work independently, finish building, and so on. Should we respect the choice of Kyivans? Yes, we should respect the choice of Kyivans. How to work with this dilemma? By law. If a new law is adopted and it is legitimate and is recognized by both Europe and the Venice Commission. One must listen to the law. 

Which Comedy Club residents do you still maintain friendly relations with?

None. 

Why?

Well, it was a betrayal and a betrayal. Because my partners still have not paid me the money. Now they are employees of Gazprom-Media. Key employees. We had an agreement, we had a legal structure. And then, when Gazprom began absorbing all the Comedy clubs in Russia, Belarus, and tried to do the same in Ukraine, it turned out that I was not very needed. I had a very large share, 30%. 

And did you work under a Russian franchise? 

I took the opportunity to use Comedy Club. I created Comedy Club UA with entirely Ukrainian residents, paid salaries to Prytula and so on.

And who betrayed you? 

It was a conspiracy, a classic one. A coup. 

From within, among the residents? That is, did someone among our residents go over to Gazprom-Media?

They wanted independence, and they got the collapse of the product. 

What sum are we talking about? 

A million dollars.

So the Ukrainian Comedy Club fell apart over a million dollars?

No. They thought they were earning more. I am owed a million dollars. 

And who was the leader of the rebels? 

These were the closest friends. There was Lirnik and Molochny, probably, and Prytula. Many people were involved in this. But specifically who was calling, they definitely said: let's get rid of him. A corporate conflict began, we agreed that we would exit this corporate conflict by paying out my share, I left the company, but then what was supposed to happen did not happen. Basically, very Russian-style.

But you were accused of supposedly embezzling some earned money? 

It is all nonsense, it was slander. Precisely for that reason I commissioned an audit from Ernst & Young for $40,000, to show that the money was not stolen and the company is worth one and a half million, everything is clean, transparent, so give me the money. Here is the seal of the audit firm for you, not your bullshit (lies). But the desire to control it, that is what happened.

So it turns out that the residents of the Ukrainian Comedy Club whom we watched, loved, were inclined to cooperate with Gazprom-Media, and they were not satisfied with your role in this? Or with your percentage?

I think it was all together. It is roughly like "LPR" and "DPR": everything will be better, now "daddy will come, he will set things in order," this whole story. You will be independent, you will earn all the money. 

And what was your system of relations with those Russian franchise holders?

Listen, they were quite close acquaintances, friends. We were all KVN players.

Are we talking about people who were there...?

Well, Artur Dzhanibekyan, Artem Sarkisyan and Gasparyan, I think. And then Martirosyan appeared. Well, listen, hi, hi, how are you, we will do such-and-such, here are my people, we are champions of the KVN Ukraine premier league, we have such brands, we can do this and that, let's do it together.

Okay, okay, we shook hands. We opened an LLC. No, first I gave my company, gave my office. There was something else too. Then I opened a second company. We invested 30 thousand, earned 2.5 million dollars. 

And since then you have not communicated with any of them?

Almost not. 

What relations did you have then within the project with Sergey Prytula? 

Working ones. Colleagues. The first monologue for him was written by Mr. Lirnik, it was called "Like Cossacks." We understood that this concept of independent Ukrainian stand-up would work, and I insisted that half of the content of Ukrainian Comedy Club be in Ukrainian, on Inter. For the first time in the entire history, someone thought that the content should be in Ukrainian.

And do you maintain relations with Russian comedians? 

No. I left the project in 2007.

So perhaps there are some close connections?

Look, if I run into Pisarenko, the Kvartal people and so on, of course there will be warm hugs, buddy-buddy stories of all kinds. Because we all respect each other, know each other and so on. That is not going anywhere. But congratulating someone on their birthday, no.

Are you acquainted with Zelensky?

Yes. 

What kind of relationship do you have?

Well, once we were rivals, quite tough ones. They tried to create "Vechirniy Kvartal" and open across the whole country as well. Well, look, he played KVN, I played KVN. They became champions in 2001 or 2003, I became vice-champion in 2004 and champion in 2005.

They played in the Higher League, reached the semifinal, I played in the Higher League in Russia, and I was eliminated immediately, because our humor was not fully accepted at that time. They opened Quarter 95 in either 2004 or 2005, we opened Comedy in 2006. It is a partnership, buddy-buddy kind of story, there is this kind of respect present.

Describe Zelensky. 

If he is offered a lot, a lot of money, for example $10 billion, or a successful country, he will choose the successful country. Because this is a person who grew up feeding his ego. Applause, they feed his enormous ego. The desire to be cool, to be liked, to be successful, it is not controlled. If he is offered cool projects and money, he will choose cool projects, one hundred percent. 

But that is about ego.

Yes, it is about ego. And that is very cool. For the country right now, that is very cool. Is he a professional? Well, he is learning. Let him learn. It is better than a commerce man. One hundred percent. Because if you offer money to a commerce man, he will choose money.