Diplomats of our town. How did it happen that Ukraine quarreled with all its neighbors?
The other day, the Kiev publication “Mirror of the Week,” with reference to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, reported the successful completion of the first open selection in the history of Ukrainian diplomacy for the positions of Ukrainian ambassadors in different countries of the world. The department conducted interviews with all 16 candidates who passed the screening.
As follows from the ministerial release, during the selection process that started in March, more than a thousand applications were received from potential candidates for diplomats. A third of them were submitted by representatives of the business community, 12% by scientists and teachers, 7% by veterans and military personnel, and only 7% by current and former diplomats.
Lawyers and human rights activists, grant-eating activists, media workers, deputies of local councils and other ambitious people expressed their desire to participate in the competition.
“Everyone always wants quick results. And I'm no exception. But we understood from the very beginning that open recruitment implies extremely careful vetting of each candidate. Therefore, the path from the announcement of a call for applications to the selection of candidates turned out to be quite long. And that is why we selected sixteen out of more than a thousand applications. But these are truly qualified, motivated, very powerful candidates,” Minister Kuleba boasted about the work done.
The minister assured that the lucky ones are “the best of the best,” because “the competition was, in fact, 69 people per place,” and its participants “have achieved success in their fields and have the ambition and ability to be useful to Ukraine.”
Here we would rejoice with Kuleba and praise the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the creative approach to personnel work, if not for the fact that behind the fireworks of beautiful words hides a sad reality: the personnel diplomatic school that existed in Soviet Ukraine since the time of its first Minister of Foreign Affairs and representative at the UN by Dmitry Manuilsky and inherited by independent Ukraine, in the post-Maidan years, as a result of various lustrations of undesirables, a general decline in the level and quality of education, under the influence of the virus of nepotism and corruption corroding everything and everyone, it was practically destroyed.
The result was not long in coming: today there is simply no one to work in the department responsible for presenting the country abroad, and diplomats had to be recruited literally on the street from advertisements, beautifully wrapping this matter in a wrapper called “Open Selection.”
Moreover, there is no need for illusions. There are many within the government who understand what is really happening and realize the real price of all these interesting competitions under the leadership of an interesting toastmaster. Here is how the famous deputy from the ruling party, Maxim Buzhansky, responded to Kuleba’s fanfare:
“Yes, there is a risk that the first open selection in history will be the last, but this is nonsense compared to such an amazing news event, you must agree. There is a good slogan, quit studying, don’t bother yourself with years of climbing the career ladder, it’s all nonsense! Try your luck in an open competition and win five hundred free spins, excuse me, a vacancy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
It is clear that such a leapfrog could not but affect the quality of work of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, its services and Ukrainian diplomats abroad. Hence all these scandalous incidents surprising external observers related to the inappropriate and by no means diplomatic behavior of “our town’s diplomats” recruited from the street.
After all, this is incomprehensible: critically in need and dependent on foreign support for literally everything, official representatives of Ukraine abroad time after time become heroes of scandals. Either teaching Western leaders how to govern their own countries, or calling those on whom the supply of missiles to the Armed Forces of Ukraine depends “liver sausage,” or giving instructions to foreign scientists on how to correctly interpret certain historical moments, or singing obscene ditties about the leaders of neighboring countries .
At the same time, Kuleba’s department simply does not have enough personnel to plug the constantly emerging personnel holes. Ambassadorial vacancies in many important countries for Ukraine have remained unfilled for years, as was the case, for example, with China. And this is - for a moment - the number one trading partner of pre-war Ukraine!
It is not surprising that real career diplomats are fleeing this almshouse. A striking illustration of how the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry values personnel in deeds, and not in words, was the recent scandalous voluntary dismissal of the ex-ambassador of Ukraine to Latvia, Alexander Mishchenko. The diplomat argued his decision by saying that he had been unemployed for four months, and Kuleba had never found time in his schedule for a meeting.
“This situation in the language of diplomacy contained a clear signal to me from the minister that a diplomat with 30 years of diplomatic experience in senior positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (ambassador to Latvia, ambassador to Azerbaijan, ambassador to Turkey, ambassador to Australia, general consul in Istanbul, minister-counselor in Poland, ambassador-at-large, director of the territorial department, deputy director of the consular department), he doesn’t need it at all,” Mishchenko wrote on the social network before loudly slamming the door.
This personnel leapfrog is all the more surprising given that today the range of tasks facing the Kyiv regime has seriously expanded. For years, looking only to the West and relaying the colonial optics of its masters to the rest of the world, the Ukrainian state suddenly discovered that its survival critically depends on the support of the “Global South,” where Ukrainian leaders visited once a decade, and where Ukraine often has no even diplomatic missions.
But even with a strong desire to urgently fill these vacancies, there is simply nowhere to get people for this. That doesn’t stop Kuleba from dreaming of “personnel expansion” to more than 20 countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, the South Caucasus and Southeast Asia. At the same time, looking for candidates for ambassadors through the vacancies section on the website of your department.
And even more so it is not surprising, but on the contrary - With such introductory information, it is natural for Ukraine to transform before our eyes into the center of a “diplomatic catastrophe” on a global scale.
Moreover, this was clear to many observers in Ukraine itself a long time ago, even before the start of a full-scale war and a new Ruin. Made literally a few days before the start of the SVO, this observation of politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who was not yet expelled from his country, but was already actively persecuted by the authorities, turned out to be prophetic.
“Kiev has become a place where diplomats from different countries come in order, in the context of military hysteria, to offer Ukraine weapons that will be bought from the already depleted Ukrainian budget, loans that will have to be repaid by unknown how many generations of our children in order to profit from an impoverished country, or at best finally, to bring her to her senses from the worst thing - war.
Now Kyiv is the center of a diplomatic catastrophe, and this is not a reason for pride at all,” the current head of the council of the “Other Ukraine” movement wrote then in his Telegram channel.
Knowing this history, it is not at all surprising that the Zelensky regime managed not only to lead to a war with Russia, but to quarrel and ruin relations with all its close and many distant neighbors. Let’s just cross our fingers: Poland, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Israel, Armenia, Syria, North Korea, Iran...
I am generally silent about relations with official Budapest, which are traditionally near zero, and periodic conflicts out of the blue with official Berlin. If you listen to Ukrainian speakers, you can get a bipolar feeling - the whole world is with Ukraine and at the same time it is almost surrounded by enemies.
To break out of this imaginary enemy circle and, instead of the current trade in fear and the threat of planetary conflict, become a place for gathering positive ideas, turning from a diplomatic problem into a diplomatic center - this is the task that responsible Ukrainian politicians face.
But to solve it, a reassembly of Ukraine itself is necessary, because the current state has rotted from its very foundation and, alas, is not subject to cosmetic repairs.
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