Ukraine president calls for dismissal of security head

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told a June 15 meeting of the MPs of his parliamentary faction that he supports dismissing Valentyn Naylyvaychenko, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). He asked for their support in a dismissal vote in parliament today, reported pravda.com.ua, citing an anonymous source present. Nalyvaychenko was offered the position of head of foreign intelligence, yet he declined, the president reportedly said.

 

The president’s decision is based on Nalyvaychenko’s failure to control large stream of contraband flowing in and out of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic and ongoing corruption in the SBU, reported theinsider.ua news site on June 15. The report also cited Nalvaychenko’s presidential ambitions. The same news site cited a conflict between Nalyvaychenko and Yuriy Artiukhov, the first deputy SBU head who is reportedly loyal to the president yet also recently accused of corruption by several People’s Front MPs.

 

Former First Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoliy Danylenko collected bribes from the owners of an illegal gasoline storage base outside of Kyiv, identified as BSRM-Nafta, in exchange for providing political protection, Nalyvaychenko said on June 15, as reported by the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. The comment came three days after he made the allegation yet didn’t mention Danylenko’s name.

 

Nalyvaychenko submitted his evidence to prosecutors on June 15, the news report said, adding that he will force his way into the prosecutor’s office to gain permission and then order Danylenko’s arrest. In turn, Danylenko denied the accusation and said he’ll file a slander complaint against Nalyvaychenko. BRSM officials also stated that Danylenko wasn’t involved with their company.

 

The Presidential Administration canceled on June 14 Nalyvaychenko’s planned visit to the U.S. on June 16-17, requiring him to appear for questioning at the Prosecutor General’s Office regarding his accusations. Nalyvaychenko was scheduled to address the U.S. Congress and meet with high-ranking U.S. officials.

 

Under Nalyvaychenko’s leadership, the SBU acted to prevent an American businessman from entering Ukraine in July 2014, which enabled oligarch Dmytro Firtash to take control of his property, alleged MP Serhiy Leshchenko in a June 16 blog. He demonstrated a letter on his blog from the SBU acknowledging the businessman was prevented from entering because of his role in a criminal case. Yet the case was beyond the authority of the SBU, which should have acted to ensure his arrival for the investigation, Leshchenko said. 

 

Possible replacements to Danylenko are Vasyl Hrytsak, the first deputy SBU head, and Andriy Taranov, a deputy head of the Presidential Administration, pravda. com. ua reported.

 

Zenon Zawada: It’s a serious conflict when the president to want to switch the head of the SBU during a war. We believe the source of the conflict is the president’s widening rift with Dmytro Firtash, the powerful natural gas trader. Nalyvaychenko is widely identified to be aligned with Firtash and Poroshenko essentially inherited Nalyvaychenko as SBU head when he became president in June last year. Now that Firtash is no longer an ally, Poroshenko sees the need to get his own loyal person in the role of SBU head.

 

All the mutual accusations – between the president’s camp and Nalyvaychenko – of corruption or poor job performance are secondary, in our view. There are plenty of poorly performing high-ranking officials who are still on the job because they have demonstrated their loyalty to the president. Nalyvaychenko is being dismissed because he’s shown his loyalty to be with Firtash, now an enemy to the president despite their cooperation pact reached in April in Vienna last year.

 

This conflict confirms that little has changed in Ukrainian politics, which is largely a stage for warring oligarchs and their struggle for control of assets and revenue streams. And Poroshenko won’t be capable of changing that dynamic and establishing some form of rule of law. As a powerful oligarch himself, we expect Poroshenko to go forward politically by continuing to build his hierarchy of power, starting with the new SBU head, and then working to secure majorities in most oblast and city councils in the October local elections to be held nationally. We expect at least three parliamentary factions will oppose the president’s nomination for a new SBU head. Yet the president can muster enough votes from independent MPs.

 

Ukraine’s internal oligarch wars, which are being conducted on top of the war with Russia, have grave implications for the nation’s future, indicating it can’t be on the path to reform that was successfully undertaken by Poland and the Baltic states. Nor will Ukraine win the war against Russia – only American sanctions will be capable of doing that. What’s disturbing about this episode is that the oligarch wars are affecting the nation’s ability to conduct war with Russia in forcing a switch in the leadership of the nation’s security services.