High-tech lawyer resigns from Ukrainian government

Sasha Borovik, a Ukrainian-born German national who served as first deputy economy minister, confirmed his resignation on May 14. He cited a conflict with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk in which he insisted on his position as being a technocrat who has to honestly discuss what he sees, as reported by the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty news agency. He was responsible for organizing a donor conference and told Yatsenyuk that European organizations would want a report on expenditures on funds offered by the West, the report said. Borovik joined the economy ministry in January after an international career in which he worked as a lawyer in numerous corporations, including Microsoft and Akamai Technologies, he wrote in a May 12 blog posted on Ukrayinska Pravda news site.

During his brief tenure, Borovik noticed that the scale of state interference in the Ukrainian economy was enormous, wasteful and all-encompassing, he reported in his blog post. Moreover, the country lacks a complex strategy in implementing economic reforms. “Numerous approaches and measures for easing doing business in Ukraine were developed, yet it wasn’t understood what type of economy we’re building in Ukraine,” he said.

Borovik said he had no personal conflict with Economic Development Minister Aivaras Abromavicius, but they had intellectual differences. “I asserted that the country needs a consistent economic strategy and in my view, the ministry is supposed to develop a liberal daily agenda for Ukraine,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “I also asserted that simply deregulation won’t have an effect, and there’s supposed to be a certain system behind it. We also didn’t agree on our vision on the pace of reforms. I asserted that they’re supposed to work quicker and deeper. Abromavicius felt that everything was fine.”

Zenon Zawada: Borovik’s exposure of the inner workings of the Cabinet of Ministers confirms what was widely suspected: a lack of a systemic approach to reforms, a slow pace of reforms not intense enough and lingering corruption. Indeed it’s no surprise that people from the corporate sector find themselves out of place and rejected by such a labyrinthine bureaucracy as the Ukrainian cabinet. It’s particularly revealing that Borovik was dissatisfied with the work of the economy ministry, which is considered among the most dynamic and successful in conducting reforms.

The Ukrainian government still has yet to grasp the urgency of the need for reforms, confirming our previous view that its approach consists of doing just enough to get by. That won’t be good enough to satisfy not only Western institutions, but the Ukrainian public. If the government doesn’t change its approach, we expect a burgeoning protest movement led by the creative and middle classes. Such a protest movement could force new elections for parliament or the presidency within a few years.