Ukraine prime minister agrees to resign in favor of Hroisman, reports say

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk agreed during the weekend to submit his resignation, reported on March 21 the apostrophe.com.ua news site, citing anonymous sources. Yatsenyuk will make the formal announcement at the weekly Cabinet meeting on March 23. The same day, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc will hold a party congress to nominate the current Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Hroisman as prime minister. Recall, Yuriy Lutsenko, the parliamentary faction head of the Poroshenko Bloc, said on March 20 that the Poroshenko Bloc supports Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko as prime minister.

In exchange for his resignation, Yatsenyuk was assured that his allies, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko, will retain their posts, the apostrophe.com.ua report said. Also, Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party will gain the parliamentary speaker position, for which MPs Maksym Burbak and Andriy Parubiy are being considered.

Lutsenko said on March 21 that he is calling a meeting on March 23 of representatives of the factions of the failed coalition to nominate a candidate as prime minister and create the new government. Hroisman’s candidacy is supposed to be voted upon in parliament on March 24, the apostrophe.com.ua report said. Recall, Lutsenko said on March 20 that he hopes parliament will vote on March 24 for a new prime minister, Cabinet and program. At the same time, Poroshenko Bloc MP Iryna Friz said on March 21 that parliament is unlikely to meet this week as there’s little time to meet the procedures to call an extraplenary session.

Zenon Zawada: It will truly be a breakthrough in the coalition-forming process if it’s confirmed tomorrow that Yatsenyuk has agreed to resign and leave the political stage in favor of Hroisman. However, we are skeptical since this is not the first such media report in the last month, with previous ones proving to be baseless.

This coalition-forming process has resulted in new twists and turns with each day, which could be interpreted as fierce deal-making or the more conspiratorial view that smokescreens are being formed. For instance, the latest reports reveal conflicting information, most notably that Poroshenko convinced Yatsenyuk to resign on the weekend in favor of Hroisman, yet his faction announced its support for Jaresko on Monday. Yet the same faction will nominate Hroisman tomorrow.

In terms of what’s most likely, Hroisman’s candidacy as PM will have more support than Jaresko not only from the MPs of the Poroshenko Bloc, but from other factions, groups and independent MPs. As for the next coalition, the lb.ua news site reported yesterday that the Fatherland party is more likely to become the third component (alongside the Poroshenko Bloc and People’s Front) than Oleh Liashko’s Radical Party, which its sources in the Presidential Administration view as doubtful. Yet with her status as the president’s leading potential rival, we view it as highly doubtful that Yulia Tymoshenko would attach her Fatherland party to Poroshenko’s declining status.

Instead, we view the Radical Party as the likely candidate to form the next coalition, which needs to be forged out of the current six parliamentary factions. This would maintain the current political order and distribution of influence. It also implies that the Self-Reliance and Fatherland parties would form a fierce, pro-Western opposition to the president and the status quo, with which the majority of Ukrainians are highly dissatisfied with.