Ukraine PM urged to replace Avakov in exchange for Shokin, report says

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was urged to replace Interior Minister Arsen Avakov during a Jan. 21 strategy session involving Ukrainian President Poroshenko, reported the pravda.com.ua news site that day, citing an anonymous source in the Poroshenko Bloc. It was stated that Avakov should be replaced because of his unsatisfactory job performance and personal enmity with the president, the report said. An offer was made to replace Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin at the same time as Avakov’s dismissal, the report said. It was proposed that if a deal isn’t made, parliament will be dismissed with early elections set for the spring, the report said.

Zenon Zawada: The political teams of Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk appear to be rivals so consumed by their enmity that they can’t even work together to fix the gaping leaks in the ship that they’re sailing on. Early parliamentary elections would erase the People’s Front from Ukraine’s political map while giving the president a parliament even more hostile than the current one. In this context, they need each other for survival and should take steps to not only avoid political suicide, but to protect the Ukrainian state from domestic strife that Moscow will take advantage of. At the same time, more pressure on the president to conduct reforms from a radicalized parliament wouldn’t be the worst outcome either.