He was elected to the Verkhovna Rada: what was Oleg Blokhin's political career like

Not all fans remember that the Golden Ball winner Oleg Blokhin, after sporting triumphs, chose the path of politics. At the turn of the millennium, the former Dynamo player became a People's Deputy and changed several parties in that time.

24 The channel reminds us of the political scandals Blokhin found himself in, and how his attempts to stay in power ended.

Oleg Blokhin – People's Deputy

In 1998 the outstanding athlete was elected to the Verkhovna Rada for the first time. He received his mandate as part of the All-Ukrainian Union "Community" – the party of the notoriously corrupt Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who, after the corruption scandal, fled Ukraine taking a large amount of state funds with him.

Against the backdrop of one of the most resonant bribery cases in the history of our state, Blokhin left the discredited party and for a time moved to Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna.

In 2001 Blokhin decided to switch to the Communist Party and, a year later, was back in Parliament. There he once again – and for the last time – became a defector to another political force. The footballer and coach changed his registration to the pro-Russian future party of Ukraine's traitor Viktor Medvedchuk.

In Parliament Blokhin dealt with issues of youth policy, sport, physical culture, and tourism in the relevant committee.

Blokhin in scandalous advertisement for the

In the 2006 elections, Oleg Blokhin ran as part of the SDPU(o) in the bloc "Not So" formed by pro-Russian forces who sought to oppose the power formed after the Orange Revolution.

Blokhin ended up in, to put it mildly, not the best company: besides Medvedchuk, the bloc included Nestor Shufrych, Yuriy Boyko, Leonid Kravchuk and other politicians who promoted "the Russian language as the second state language, opposition to the EU and NATO in favor of the Customs Union with Russia and agreements with Moscow on cheap gas."

That same time the athlete participated in a well-known political advertisement, where he used his image of the 'lucky' one after he first managed to lead Ukraine's national team to the World Cup finals.

The scandalous advertisement with Blokhin – watch the video:

Ultimately the Not So bloc did not clear the threshold to the Rada, and Blokhin no longer tried to enter Parliament and ended the political chapter of his life.