Zelenskiy meets with key security, anti-corruption officials

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with
acting Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Head Ivan Bakanov on June 3,
requesting him to begin work on resetting the national security body and to
report on his results in two weeks. He specifically asked Bakanov to focus on
addressing contraband and the black market economy. While recognizing that
Bakanov is his childhood friend and business partner in his entertainment
company, Zelenskiy stressed that he has serious responsibilities before the
Ukrainian public. “We always told each other the truth and didn’t allow others
to speak falsehoods,” Zelenskiy told Bakanov, as reported by the Presidential
Administration website. “We never stole, didn’t allow others to steal and
always remained (decent) people. It seems that the priority of the SBU’s work
should be such values. We should remain as (decent) people under any
conditions.” Bakanov was appointed first deputy head of the SBU by a
presidential decree on May 22.

In a May 31 meeting with National Anti-Corruption
Bureau Head Artem Sytnyk and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office
Head Nazar Kholodnytskiy, Zelenskiy offered his guarantee that they will be
allowed to work independently and protected from interference in their
activity. “The emergence of tangible results in the investigation of
significant corruption crimes in the next three months will be an indicator of
the ability of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and National
Anti-Corruption Bureau to meet the expectations of Ukrainians,” he said, as
reported on the Presidential Administration website.

Zenon Zawada: So far, Zelenskiy
is doing well in creating his image, presenting himself as a proactive leader,
setting agenda priorities for his key officials and demanding that they show
results. It’s apparent that his administration wants to apply the pragmatism of
the corporate world to Ukrainian governance. Time will tell whether Zelenskiy
will have success, but he is delivering the pragmatic approach that millions of
young, urban professionals of Ukraine’s Generation X are hoping to see. With
these actions, Zelenskiy is preparing a strong result for The People’s Servant
party in the July parliamentary elections. Any resistance by bureaucrats and
“old guard” officials will only feed Zelenskiy’s popularity.

At the same time, Zelenskiy has to rely on trusted
associates and he’s shown he’s willing to appoint them to influential
positions, despite their lack of experience. While it’s understandable to have
a trusted ally like Bakanov at the SBU leadership, appointing him as SBU head
(which Bakanov recently said he’s interested in doing) could undermine the
pragmatism and meritocracy that Zelenskiy is supposed to be committed to. Some
in the public will expect the SBU head to be someone with some minimal extent
of experience in Ukraine’s national security sector, though the argument has
also made that a wholesale cleaning of the institution is in order. Others have
drawn the analogy that appointing a trusted friend would be similar to former
President Poroshenko appointing Yuriy Lutsenko, someone with no legal
education, as prosecutor general.

Zelenskiy has also drawn criticism from Western
think tankers for appointing on May 29 Ihor Kolomoisky’s longtime bodyguard,
Maksym Donets, to head the presidential security service. Again, the public
can’t expect Zelenskiy to sever his ties from those people who have earned his
trust over the years. But we can expect him to place them in reasonable
positions of authority. Someone like Donets as head of Zelenskiy’s security
detail seems more reasonable than Andriy Bohdan as Presidential Administration
head and the possibility of Bakanov as SBU head. Though given the corruption of
Ukraine’s institutions, many actions considered to be unreasonable in the West
could turn out to be successful (as with the election of a comedian with no
political experience as president).