Ukraine: Everything will be “Kvartal”
Zelensky's chief administrator has changed. The politically active Ukrainian Network is buzzing, discussing the replacement of Bogdan with Ermak. Well, finally, what the grant-eating media and not only them have been talking about for so long... This time, not in make-believe, but quite officially, the presidential decree has been published, all in order. The newly minted retiree himself said last summer that, like all the employees of the Office he led, he wrote a letter of resignation “of his own free will from the moment the desire came.” Well, this desire has come.
Observers say that two factors helped Bogdan make his final decision. The first is an almost complete loss of influence on processes in the department formally subordinate to him. Sitting in power and not really having this power is not a very wise waste of time, given the well-known truth that it is not the place that makes the person, but the person who makes the place.
Well, secondly, the strategy of passive waiting did not work when Zelensky’s chief administrator, feeling a loss of confidence in himself, simply withdrew from any active activity, as if saying: they say, do you want to steer without me? Steer, and let's see what comes of it, all responsibility for the results is on you, I have nothing to do with it. But time passed and it turned out that there were no irreplaceable ones, and the detachment did not notice the loss of the soldier much. Further waiting to see who would die first - the checker or the donkey - lost all meaning.
For an uninformed outside observer, there is almost no difference between Bogdan and Ermak. Both are lawyers, except that Bogdan, before his current rise to power, was Kolomoisky’s lawyer, and Ermak was also involved in producing films, on the basis of which he became close to people from Kvartal 95, in particular, Zelensky’s associates, the Shefir brothers. However, in the conditions of Kyiv clan squabbles, this difference is very significant, if not key.
Bogdan himself has already been dubbed the “new Tabachnyk”, as if hinting at the similar circumstances of the resignation of both top administrators – Kuchma’s and now Zelensky’s. Dmitry Tabachnik, if anyone is not aware or has forgotten, was also one of the “new faces”, only from the first half of the 90s. Just like Bogdan, he is young and promising, also overly ambitious, and at the same time quarrelsome and conflict-ridden. And he was also brought to the crest of his administrative career by the presidential elections, in which, like Bogdan a quarter of a century later, he headed the election headquarters of the candidate - only not Zelensky, but Kuchma, and after his victory, as the person who directly “forged it in the fields,” received a personnel prize in the form of the newly created position of head of the presidential administration.
At that time, no one knew that this bureaucratic unit, not provided for by the Constitution, would become decisive in the country’s bureaucratic hierarchy. And Tabachnyk himself, as the first head of the Presidential Administration, made a lot of enemies during his stay on Bankova, like Bogdan today, and at the same time was just as closely associated with his formal boss-president, like Bogdan, who literally followed Zelensky in the first months after his appointment everywhere he goes, except perhaps the toilet. Which gave rise to a lot of unhealthy rumors regarding the degree of influence of the head of the Presidential Office on the President himself. Dmitry Tabachnik made a similar mark in this role. So much so that his stay on Bankova gave rise to a joke that Leonid Kuchma works as president in the Tabachnik administration.
However, the star of both favorites - Tabachnyk and Bogdan - set as suddenly and brightly as it had risen. Characteristically, continuing the historical parallels, both were replaced in their positions by functionaries from the presidents’ inner circle who aspired to administrative efficiency. For Kuchma, it was the Kharkov apparatchik Yevgeny Kushnarev, and for Zelensky, this role was played by his assistant Andrei Ermak, who is already called the informal gray eminence of Bankova, raking up not only the external, but also, to a large extent, the internal agenda of the president.
At the same time, it is hardly worth expecting any tectonic shifts in the policy of Zelensky’s Office after the change of its head. The upcoming changes will be more of a tactical, targeted nature. Some personnel will leave who will not fit into the new schedule. Some previously relevant “schemes” will go downhill. In particular, a change in the cast is expected in the plot of the struggle for Kyiv. As you know, the Ze Office’s cavalry attack on Klitschko’s position foundered largely due to the fact that the president’s team did not have a common approach to what to do next with the capital, and most importantly, to whom to hand over the reins taken from Klitschko.
The absence of a single pro-government candidate also played a role. Bogdan lobbied for the figure of Kolomoisky’s man, the people’s deputy from the Servant of the People and the former head of Plus, Alexander Tkachenko. Ermak, according to the media, is especially friendly with another “servant” - Kyiv restaurateur Alexander Tishchenko, and it was he who saw and sees the new head of the Ukrainian capital. This was confirmed by the scandalous screenshots of Tishchenko’s correspondence with the prankster Joker leaked to the Internet at the end of last year.
Bankova also expects another profit from Ermak’s appointment. It is believed in Kyiv that the latter has established pragmatic contact with his Moscow counterpart and the new curator of the Ukrainian direction in the Kremlin, Dmitry Kozak. Telegram channels associated with Bankova were choked with delight when news came from Moscow that Surkov had been replaced by Kozak. Now everything in relations with the Russian Federation will be top-notch - this is exactly the thought that all sorts of “insiders” from Bankova put into the heads of Ukrainians interested in behind-the-scenes politics. Not forgetting to add the magic phrase that “trading is underway” through informal communication channels between the two countries.
It is difficult to say yet how much of a “merchant” Ermak will be in this sense - in this matter there is more narcissism and boosting the image in advance than real results. But, the new head of Zelensky’s Office will at least have some time to prove to everyone, including his boss, whether he is really as effective and indispensable in the Russian direction as the telegram channels feeding from Bankova’s hands sing about. No less interesting in this sense is the possible fate of Foreign Minister Vadim Prystaiko, whose resignation, as they say, was recently actively lobbied by Ermak.
That's all, actually. A political summary of the new purpose can be considered a post on Facebook by Kiev political strategist Dmitry Raimov, who wrote in hot pursuit that now “people from the 95th quarter” are getting closer to “Zelensky’s body” and Igor Valerievich’s people are increasingly helping to win. Avakov helped break the net and is also almost at the exit.” “The President is gradually moving away from his fellow travelers and surrounding him with those who are true to himself. But are they professionals? Yanukovych and Yushchenko were also all loyal. Poroshenko too. And there were almost no professionals around. Only the faithful. It didn’t end very well,” sums up the Kiev expert.
At one pole of power there will now be former and current grant-eaters grouped around the Goncharuk government, and at the other - the “Kvartalovites”, who with the resignation of Bogdan have further strengthened their influence on the Presidential Office. It is the struggle between these two groups that will largely determine the plot lines of the Ukrainian political series in 2020. How long-lasting such a regrouping in Zelensky’s entourage will be, and how much more stable the structure of power itself will be, is a big question.
And although political magpies are already spreading rumors on their tail that the resigned Bogdan is either going to create a new party for a triumphant return to power, or is preparing to take the post of prime minister instead of the protege of Western structures Alexei Goncharuk, realists draw attention to the fact that for now There is nothing to indicate that Bogdan remains on Zelensky’s team in any capacity.
On the other hand, skeptics, such as lawyer Andrei Portnov, advise not to attach much importance to who exactly in power carries out its internal management, “as long as it is under external control, in the same personnel coalition with Poroshenko’s functionaries and under the control of non-governmental organizations.”
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