Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine is defending itself from the Russian invasion and at the same time seems to want to clean up part of the oligarchic corruption that for decades has dominated the administration’s resources. The Ukrainian president dismissed his defense minister this Sunday, Oleksy Reznikov, who had directed the country’s defense since the beginning of the war. The fall of Reznikov, who has not been personally accused of any case of corruption but has been accused of covering up cases involving subordinates, covers a more important fall.
On Saturday the Ukrainian Justice prosecuted Igor Kolomoisky, the billionaire oligarch who launched Zelensky’s political career. He is accused of fraud, corruption and money laundering.
Zelensky did not want to relate Reznikov’s dismissal with corruption. This Sunday he said that “the Ministry needs new proaches and new modes of interaction with the Armed Forces as well as with civil society in a broader sense.” Zelensky had announced Reznikov’s dismissal on his Telegram account.
The now dismissed Defense Minister was on the tightrope for weeks after another case of corruption that hpened too close to him. This time about the winter clothing that had been bought for the soldiers. In recent months, his subordinates had been accused of paying commissions for imports of ammunition, food and military medical supplies. Reznikov always protected his subordinates and ended up falling. The Ukrainian press assures that he will go as ambassador to London.
The new
The new minister, if Parliament accepts Zelensky’s proposal, will be Roustem Oumerov. Muslim Crimean Tatar (Zelensky is Jewish), is a member of an opposition party who allied himself with Zelensky after the start of the war. He is a financier by profession and has no experience with Defense policies.
But the dismissal of Reznikov and the pointment of Oumerov cover up a much more important fall, that of Kolomoisky. Two months ago he had to sit before a judge to answer for the accusations that now lead him to be prosecuted, but then no one believed that Justice would dare to take on a character who was at the origin of the president’s political campaign. He was able to free himself from preventive detention by paying bail of 12.5 million euros but he refused to do so and entered prison on the same Saturday.
Kolomoisky was for years one of the most important oligarchs in the Ukrainian political world. Protected behind his multimillion-dollar fortune created from a business empire of media, oil companies and metallurgical factories, all dependent on the ‘Privat’ bank, he dedicated himself to financing political parties and figures.
Zelensky owes him the beginnings of his popularity because he was “1+1”, a television channel owned by the oligarch and one of the most important in the country. the one who launched comedian and comedian Zelensky to stardom. At the end of the last decade, the now president starred in a television series in which he played precisely the president of Ukraine. Shortly after, in 2019, he won the presidential election.
Kolomoisky started to be annoying in 2021, when The United States included him in one of its sanctions regimes for corruption and money laundering.
Since then, Ukraine has legislated to limit the power of oligarchs in politics, especially limiting their ability to control the media. Ukraine must show the United States and, now especially the European Union, that it is fighting corruption if it wants the European Commission to recommend to the governments of the 27 this fall that the country open accession negotiations to the European Union. If opened, that process could take years.
Source: Clarin
