Ukraine PM Honcharuk submits resignation letter

Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk submitted
on Jan. 17 a resignation letter to the President’s Office. “I came to the
position to fulfill the president’s program. For me, he is a model of candor
and decency. However, in order to remove any doubts of our respect and trust in
the president, I wrote a resignation statement and handed it to the president
with the right to submit it to parliament. He is a person that Ukrainians have
expressed unprecedented trust in. And he has the full right to estimate the
effectiveness of each member of his team that is changing the country,”
Honcharuk wrote in a Facebook post.

Honcharuk also used the post to report on the results
of his work since his appointment in September, stressing that corruption is
absent “at the top levels” of his government. He also stressed his team has
produced a serious foundation for the country’s development in 2020,
particularly regarding the launch of a serious of online services in the
nearest months “that will simply the lives of people forever,” he wrote.

The President’s Office said in a Facebook post that it
has received Honcharuk’s resignation letter, which the president is currently
reviewing. The President’s Office will inform the public on the results of its
review separately, the statement said. People’s Servant Parliamentary Faction
Head David Arakhamia withheld comment on the letter, stating the president will
have the final say on Honcharuk’s resignation. If Zelensky accepts Honcharuk’s
resignation, he must submit it to parliament for a vote of approval.

Zenon Zawada: With his
resignation letter, Honcharuk is looking for a vote of confidence from the
president on the difficult path that he has taken. If he gets Zelensky’s
endorsement, it will extinguish any doubts regarding the president’s support,
which were created by the Jan. 15 leak of Honcharuk’s scandalous comments made
in a private December meeting. We also believe Honcharuk is looking to see
whether Zelensky will form a tight alliance with him to resist pressures placed
upon the government by former Privatbank shareholder Igor Kolomoisky. It’s
possible that Zelensky could decide to capitulate to the demands of the
oligarch, who would much prefer to see Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov
as prime minister. Indeed Avakov has emerged as a competitor to the prime
minister for power, and will continue to be even if Zelensky decides to go with
a new PM.

We can’t gauge the likelihood of Zelensky accepting
Honcharuk’s resignation, but we are confident he would have preferred to
postpone the matter until after the economic summit in Davos economic summit on
Jan. 21-24. We see Zelensky approving Honcharuk’s resignation as being highly
destabilizing for the country, with a vicious struggle for power emerging as a
result, certainly to involve Kolomoisky and Avakov. Though Honcharuk is a
neophyte who has demonstrated his naivety, his low-key, unassuming persona is
quite stabilizing, and certainly not damaging. It’s also possible that Zelensky
will decide to maintain Honcharuk’s course (on seeking damages from Kolomoisky
and securing an IMF loan program), but without Honcharuk himself.