Afterwards, he shifted into political research, where he remained until he rejoined the Lviv Oblast State Administration as head of its press service.

[5] In the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Batenko again ran as a People's Deputy in 123rd electoral district, this time as a member of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc.

Batenko defected from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc on 6 November 2015, and was elected as chairman of the political council of the UKROP party on 13 May 2016.

Batenko and the other People's Deputies were ultimately successful as the Constitutional Court blocked a system of electronic declarations from being enacted.

He has also achieved notoriety for his studies of political figures throughout Ukraine and the Commonwealth of Independent States, including his sharply-critical biographies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.