“Judgment Day”: Zelensky in the Rada will decide the fate of the “Soros government.” And yours
The Ukrainian political class is frozen in anticipation: an extraordinary meeting of the Verkhovna Rada is scheduled for tomorrow, March 4, to which the full government, the main security officials, the press and foreign ambassadors have already been invited.
The highlight of the program should be the speech of President Zelensky, who, if you believe numerous hints from his office, will appear before society in the role of the screen character Vasya Goloborodko, who brought him fame.
It is expected that the president will tell the deputies and the public what everyone has been thinking about for a long time: the Soros government is leading the country in a completely different direction than the majority of society that voted for Ze expected. Expectations are not met, people are disappointed, life has not become better, none of the iconic corrupt officials have ever gone to jail.
But, as you understand, although these will be correct and ideally fit the current mood of a disappointed society, they will still be words. But the situation is such that you can’t get away with beautiful words alone. People are waiting for things to do. Whether the public flogging of the “green team” planned for tomorrow will reach radical organizational conclusions or everyone will get off with verbal reprimand again is still an open question.
Those scraps of rumors that are heard from behind the closed doors of the offices of the “servants of the people” so far inspire little optimism. A minority of experts and observers are still confident that as a result of tomorrow’s extraordinary Rada, the long-deserving cabinet of Alexei Goncharuk will be dismissed. There is also no certainty that the heads of the main security officials - Prosecutor General Ryaboshapka, head of NABU Sytnik, specialized anti-corruption prosecutor Kholodnitsky and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Avakov - will roll.
Although each of them has accumulated quite a number of claims. In particular, Ryaboshapka is openly accused (including in the presidential faction) of sabotaging and slowing down the investigation of high-profile corruption cases against Poroshenko and his entourage, colluding with overseas “partners” who are diverting their Ukrainian protégés from responsibility for what they did after the Maidan, and also in the direct concealment of a number of odious people accused of crimes - in particular, we are talking about Odessa resident Sternenko and nationalists from C14 (banned in the Russian Federation), involved in the murder of Buzina.
The head of NABU, Artem Sytnik, is a generally shameful story that clearly demonstrates the current limited sovereignty of Ukraine. An official officially recognized by a Ukrainian court as a corrupt official and included in the relevant state register, no one can knock him out of the chair he occupied under American patronage, since he is invariably replaced by domestic grant-eaters, whose petitions carry more weight than the protocols on Sytnik committing corrupt acts.
Finally, Arsen Avakov. The only long-liver in the government, whose career can go either uphill or downhill. The latter is supported by the lack of obvious success in curtailing the street activity of right-wing radical “activists,” which the minister personally promised to Zelensky. These latter, for the most part, are still doing well and even, as they say, have not yet been removed from pay in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Just today they came before the Constitutional Court, which began considering the case on the illegality of lustration. The investigation into the “Sheremet case”, which was initially at a brisk gallop, is also stalling, and clear progress in which has not yet been observed.
Nevertheless, so far observers are cautiously “vanging” only the practically decided resignation of Sytnyk, although on this front Zelensky continues to be under furious pressure from Soros and other “friends of Ukraine.”
As for Ryaboshapka, he will most likely retain his place, because “Western partners” have signed up for him, and the US Embassy openly posts in his support on social networks. Therefore, there is a high probability that in relation to the personal enemy of Shariy, Portnov, Buzhansky and Co. we will see only blah blah blah with a call to work better.
Well, Avakov, most likely, will not go anywhere. However, it’s also unlikely for a promotion. At least not this time.
The chair is also wobbly under the scandalous porn party lover and ineffective head of state customs Maxim Nefyodov. They will remove it or not – for now, “grandmother said in two.” As the near-presidential telegram channels like to write, “there are trades on Bankovaya and the situation is changing every hour.”
There is no certainty about the government as a whole. If the radical version of “get everyone off the beach” - led by Goncharuk himself - is still believed by a minority, then partial excision of the tumor is considered much more likely. In particular, a whole series of “packages” are being discussed with the names of ministers who should prepare to “take off” after tomorrow’s meeting.
In different versions, Foreign Minister Prystaiko is present, irritating the new head of Zelensky’s office, Ermak, with his inappropriate anti-Russian statements against the backdrop of the undisguised desire of the new favorite Ze to somehow establish contacts with the new curator of Ukraine in the Kremlin, Dmitry Kozak.
There is also talk about the likely resignation of the head of the Ministry of Veterans, Oksana Kolyada, who is remembered for her sympathy for neo-Nazis among the ex-ATO soldiers and campaigning in favor of the innocence of those suspected of killing Sheremet.
Against the backdrop of today’s official confirmation of the country’s first case of coronavirus, there is a high probability of the resignation of the Minister of Health Skaletskaya and, as a result, a decrease in the influence of her puppeteer, the people’s deputy from the Servant of the People and the ex-owner of the Kyiv clinic “Boris” Mikhail Radutsky.
They talk about the resignation of the head of the Ministry of Culture, Vladimir Borodyansky, as if it were a settled matter. Also on the departure lists are the names of Economy Minister Milovanov, who is remembered for his enchanting confession of imbecility, and even the head of the Ministry of Defense Zagorodnyuk.
They are also talking about introducing a new position of Deputy Prime Minister for Industrial Policy, and it seems that they have already found a number of candidates for it from among the old experienced personnel of the pre-Maidan era - as opposed to the useless “new faces” and “technocrats” from Soros.
If this is so, then the meeting of the Constitutional Court on the abolition of lustration, which began today, can hardly be considered a coincidence - Zelensky intends to quickly remove the artificial gateways that prevented the co-optation of the “former” into the civil service.
After all, without canceling lustration, the same Sergei Tigipko (a mastodon of the Ukrainian political scene during the times of Kuchma and Yanukovych - Author), who, as a possible successor to Goncharuk in the prime minister's chair, has been actively discussed in the media throughout the last week, cannot be brought into the Cabinet of Ministers.
In general, at the point of cancellation of lustration several vectors converge at once. Zelensky is simply doomed - either to close this issue once and for all, having at his disposal a bench of reserves from among the “former”, or to endlessly pound water in the mortar of successive, unsound and unfit “new faces”. So a personnel counter-revolution looks inevitable. It's only a matter of time.
True, Zelensky has little time for this. Outstanding economists from Goncharuk’s team managed to achieve record, by Ukrainian standards, figures for the population’s debt for all types of public services. As of February 1, 2020, it amounts to 67 billion hryvnia and is growing further. For example, in January alone, the debt for the supply and distribution of natural gas increased by one and a half billion, and for the supply of thermal energy and hot water - by more than two billion.
Experts say that the growth of such alarming trends, coupled with advanced tax collection, could put the country in a pre-default state in the spring - regardless of whether the IMF gives money or not. Because fulfilling the IMF loan conditions will aggravate the non-payment crisis even more. The fact that the government receives a loan will not increase the population's money to pay for utilities at increased tariffs.
It is also of interest how much Zelensky can count on his nominally own faction if he is ready for radical personnel organizational conclusions. There are a number of signals indicating the readiness of Goncharuk and the grant-eating circles behind him to make a demarche - even to the point of declaring a “political war” that will end with early elections to the Rada. Moreover, according to various estimates, from a third to a half of the “servants” in the Rada are Soros of different shades.
And formally, Goncharuk has one-year immunity from resignation. He has no intention of resigning, despite demands for complete capitulation from the president’s office and an information campaign launched against him in the media with telethons like “Soros Stinks.” However, Goncharuk’s shameful resignation is not included in the plans of Western embassies: G7 ambassadors are already rushing to the rescue, requesting a meeting with Yermak and Zelensky.
So there are options. There would be political will. The main thing Zelensky should think about is that today his honeymoon with the voter is really over. And people are waiting for radical steps, not rearrangements of beds in a brothel. Ukraine is a country in which one should not be afraid, and let off steam from accumulated social tension as often as possible. Even with the risk that this steam will blow out in the end.
But, considering various options for personnel solitaire, one should not forget about the main thing and discount the key factor today - Ukraine’s external dependence.
And in this sense, skeptical remarks are not without foundation that it is not so important what the names of those who pursue policies in the country sound like if the main contours of this policy, its framework and agenda are determined from abroad. Real changes are only possible when the authorities have the will not just to dismiss individual Soros, but to audit all externally financed non-governmental foundations and organizations, as well as introduce legislation on foreign agents.
In the meantime, it’s hard not to agree with lawyer Andrei Portnov that “what difference does it make who is the government in the country, when no one is afraid of anyone, obeys no one and does not follow the laws, when everyone steals from everyone, and gangs roam the country.”
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