Zelensky presents cabinet nominations to People’s Servant MPs

The MPs of The People’s Servant parliamentary faction,
who form the majority, discussed on Mar. 3 the candidates for the Cabinet of
Ministers, who will be voted on today at a special legislative session.
Ukrainian President Zelensky led the meeting, at which he proposed selecting
Denys Shmyhal as the new prime minister, not just acting, as had been previously reported.
Several MPs leaked the discussed nominees to the pravda.com.ua news site.

 

Zenon Zawada: Prime
Minister Denys Shmyhal, he fits the mold of the typical politician that
The People’s Servant is looking for. Having studied in the West, the
44-year-old Shmyhal gained extensive experience as an energy executive in both
the public and private sectors. Another advantage in Shmyhal’s favor is he has
interacted with officials representing various oligarchic interests. Recall,
Honcharuk had reportedly lost favor with Zelensky when overstepping bounds with Kolomoisky’s
business interests.

 

Military-Industrial Complex Deputy Prime Minister Oleh
Korostyliov – a well-recognized, 70-year-old armaments engineer who has
served a longtime executive at a Kyiv military hardware design firm. At
minimum, the creation of this position, separate from the defense minister,
indicates the Zelensky administration wants to have two separate officials
engaged in this critical sphere of defense contracting.

 

The nomination for new defense minister is Andriy Taran,
a controversial army general who has extensive experience with the war in
Donbas, having served as Ukraine’s representative to the Joint Centre for
Control and Coordination.

 

Prosecutor General Serhiy Ionushas – the
40-year-old lawyer served as Zelensky’s power-of-attorney during his election
campaign, which indicates the president wants a close associate in this
critical position. The current prosecutor general, Ruslan Riaboshapka, was
virtually invisible in his six months in office, which is very unusual for such
a high-profile post. He didn’t initiate any apparent structural reforms, nor
anti-corruption efforts, nor did he help to bring any high-profile criminals to
trial. Similar to Riaboshapka however, Ionushas doesn’t have any prosecutorial
experience, nor any proven ability to conduct structural reforms. He built his
career as an intellectual property lawyer, so we expect no high-profile
criminal prosecutions from him.

 

Finance Minister Ihor Umanskiy – his main
distinction is having served in the cabinet of former PM Yulia Tymoshenko in
2009-2010. A wealthy veteran of Ukrainian politics, Tymoshenko leads the
Fatherland parliamentary faction that has gained poll ratings in recent months
for its fervent opposition to the launch of the farmland market. Meanwhile, the
current finance minister, Oksana Markarova, supports the market’s launch, close
IMF cooperation and free market policies.

 

Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba – the
current foreign minister, Vadym Prystaiko, hadn’t found synergy with Zelensky,
who relied entirely on his aide, Andriy Yermak, to handle the situation with
the war in Donbas. (Yermak has since been promoted to lead the President’s
Office.)  During his tenure, Prystaiko distinguished himself for proposing
alternatives to the Minsk Accords in reaching peace in Donbas, drawing much criticism from the Russians.
These alternatives include rewriting the Minsk Accords, introducing UN
peacekeepers throughout Donbas, creating a police patrol that includes officers
from both Donbas and Ukraine, and even freezing the armed conflict. Yet it’s
unclear whether these alternative proposals were exclusively the work of
Prystaiko, or in cooperation with Zelensky and Yermak. We expect Prystaiko will
be given some post in Ukraine’s diplomatc corps.

 

Energy Minister Ivan Plachkov – a veteran of
Ukraine’s energy sector, the 62-year-old served in this ministerial post in
1999 and again in 2005-2006. Before and after serving in the cabinet, Plachkov
worked for utility company Kyivenergo, having last served as head of its
supervisory board. Therefore, he effectively represented the interests of the
firm’s major shareholder, DTEK group controlled by Rinat Akhmetov. The People’s
Servant leadership believes a major factor in the dropping public support for
the government, and the parliament, is the splitting of natural gas payments in
two, for both supply and transit, as reported by local media. Moreover, the
split didn’t reduce gas payments, despite the record-setting warm winter.

 

Economy Minister Roman Zhukovskiy – the economy
minister is largely a bureaucratic post without any real influence on the
economy. What’s significant here is the Zelensky administration has decided to
recreate the separate agricultural ministry, after having merged the economy
and agrarian ministries in the summer. This was likely done in order to handle
the enormous workload of launching the farmland market.

 

The situation with possible candidates could change up
until the last minute before the vote, which is planned after 4 p.m. today.

 

The new cabinet will face bigger challenges than the
Honcharuk government, which enjoyed an initially high level of public support
(due to the euphoria related to Zelensky’s election as president). It will have
to regain the public’s trust and approve some short-term popular measures,
especially considering the local elections this fall. At the same time, it
can’t allow these measures to undermine the prospects for an IMF loan program.