Avakov. Sunset
While the future “servants of the people” are engaged in mass team building in Truskavets, serious players on the Kiev Olympus are dividing executive power, agreeing on the format and personal composition of the future government. This topic in itself is worthy of a separate discussion, as are potential candidates for prime ministers and ministers. Among others, as they are already saying almost out loud in Kyiv, the fate of such a political heavyweight as Interior Minister Arsen Avakov will be decided.
The current head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is a real political dinosaur, the only one from the cohort of Maidan beneficiaries who remains in office and power five years after the February 2014 coup, maintaining his post despite changes in prime ministers and governments.
Poroshenko was replaced by Turchynov, and Groysman by Yatsenyuk, only Avakov remained unchanged, despite the many attempts of the former president to “eat” him. However, Avakov was lucky to fight off all the attacks and even profitably withdraw from the 2019 presidential campaign, becoming neither a participant nor their victim, but an arbiter standing over the process, a kind of “all-Ukrainian sheriff” who received carte blanche from the very Washington.
But that was yesterday and five, as Roman Kartsev used to say. And today: “more than 90% say that he will leave the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which he has already come to terms with, in general, and is now busy covering all sorts of tails. At the same time, Avakov began to have a serious conflict with the head of the Presidential Office Andrei Bogdan, after which it became clear that Avakov would not remain in his post,” the Strana publication recently wrote. And the head of the presidential party, Dmitry Razumkov, officially “gives up”, declaring that they had no preliminary agreements with Avakov regarding his retention in office.
And this despite the fact that immediately after the presidential elections, Igor Kolomoisky himself, in a sensational interview with Denis Bigus, assessing the country’s leading politicians, spoke almost like Sobakevich from “Dead Souls” about the elite of the county town of N: “A fraudster sits on a fraudster and drives the fraudster around. All sellers of Christ. There is only one decent person there (in the city) – the prosecutor.” The role of “prosecutor” was then played by Avakov, whom the oligarch called “the most successful minister” and even the “foundation” on which everything in the country rests. He ensured fair elections and, in general, “this is our common victory.”
Such introductory statements gave no reason to doubt that Avakov, who successfully outlasted both Turchynov and Poroshenko in his post, would retain his position under Zelensky, perhaps giving up something and sharing spheres of influence with Kolomoisky’s people. Moreover, a number of people from Avakov’s entourage immediately materialized near Ze as advisers and candidates for deputies from the presidential party. We are talking about a pool of “experts” from the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, one of the founders of which was People’s Deputy Anton Gerashchenko, who was close to Avakov, who began singing the praises of the future president even between the first and second rounds of the spring elections and even threatened to court-martial those military personnel who refused to swear allegiance to the new commander-in-chief.
Everything was changed by the results of the parliamentary elections, which brought the Servant of the People a fabulous victory and a one-party majority in the Rada. The need to share the fruits of a single victory with someone has disappeared, as has the need for unreliable travel companions with their own far-reaching plans. As they say, the Moor has done his job, the Moor can leave. The first bell for the minister came even before the elections - it was the story of the police in the Kiev region who shot a five-year-old boy. The campaign that followed this in the press and social networks demanded that Zelensky make political and organizational conclusions regarding the minister, but then the president remained silent, and the head of the main directorate of the Kiev region, sent into exile in the Donbass, became the scapegoat.
A marker of the final cooling of relations between the two centers of power was the story of the head of the police of the Dnepropetrovsk region, Vitaly Glukhoverey. It all started with the fact that someone leaked to the Network a video of the detention of patrol officers by KORD special forces who stopped the Range Rover SUV of the General of the National Police Glukhoveri for violating traffic rules. After which the State Bureau of Investigation opened criminal proceedings under the article of abuse of power, under which the general faced up to eight years in prison.
The president immediately became involved in the scandal. “The video is shocking at the cynicism of the behavior of representatives of the old elite, who are truly convinced that they, along with their staff, live above the law. After watching it, at first I had no words - even obscene ones. But they were quickly found,” Zelensky wrote on the social network, demanding that Avakov fire the disgraced subordinate, and offering the general himself to “resign or run.”
As a result, Avakov had to fire Glukhoverya. This story demonstrated to everyone that the minister is no longer “a cake” and in the new conditions cannot serve as a reliable “roof” and protection for his subordinates from attacks “from above.” And if earlier the minister got away with everything, even the notorious massacre in Knyazhichi, now every such incident can become a real reason for resignation. Meanwhile, an electronic petition on the website of the Office of the President demanding the resignation of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has already received more than 28 thousand signatures, with the required 25 thousand.
Avakov’s departure from the government is predetermined by the very logic of the ongoing processes of consolidation of power in the hands of one center. And this center is clearly not located on Bogomolets Street in Kyiv (the central office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is located there - Author).
“The desire to remove Avakov is quite understandable on Zelensky’s part. Even under Poroshenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs occupied the position of “not first, but not second” in the state, and, if we talk about influence on key internal processes, Avakov was even closer to the position of “first” and not “second” - in in general, the real minister of all internal affairs of the country. Never before 2014 has the influence of a person in this position been so great. And it is not surprising that the new president does not want to preserve such a legacy left from the previous regime - any head of state wants to be the real head of state and not share power with someone else,” writes the already mentioned Strana publication. And we can agree with this conclusion.
In the new conditions, Avakov will not be helped either by his connections with Western “partners”, primarily in the United States, or by partnerships with right-wing radicals, for whom the search for an answer to the question “Is there life after Avakov” becomes relevant, and what place in the political alignments? they will borrow, freed from the tutelage of the previously all-powerful chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and obligations to him.
However, regardless of his plans to continue his own ministerial career, Avakov clearly has no intention of going into opposition to Zelensky. Considering, moreover, the new president’s objectively high ratings, a false start in this regard is not at all necessary. It is more profitable to wait for time and then act according to circumstances.
In the meantime, we see openly loyal notes sounding in the latest sensational post of the “Facebook minister” on the social network. Where he calls on the entire society to “rally” around the new guarantor and help him in every possible way, while at the same time pouring a tub of slop on former President Poroshenko and taking revenge on him for past grievances. And Avakov’s comrade-in-arms, Anton Gerashchenko, in turn, praises the “electoral revolution” that took place on July 21 to the skies and calls for respect for the choice of Ukrainians, “tired of decades of hypocrisy of the thieving, two-faced government at all levels and who have decided to completely reset it.” As if Gerashchenko himself had not been part of that same “thieving, two-faced government” all these years.
It is obvious that he, like his boss Avakov, like the retired Prime Minister Groysman, believe that they still have “everything ahead” and all they need is to just wait until the wheel of the Ukrainian genoba makes another turn and the current “enemies of the people” will not change places with their current “servants.”
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.