All high-ranking officials who will leave their positions this week should have done so a long time ago. All those who will hold new positions should never do this. The trouble is that both the first and the second are the same people. In general, they should not be here, but they are cozy here and ride on the carousel of power, changing from an elephant to a horse, and from a horse to a tiger. Here they are cowboys, here they are Indian rajas, and here they are British ambassadors.
Can we stop the carousel for a moment? After all, it has already started to feel sick...
So, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Oleksiy Reznikov, is finally leaving his post. This required such high-profile cases as "eggs for 17 hryvnias", "summer-winter" jackets, low-quality bulletproof vests, vegetarian dry rations for the price of steaks and a double portion of the inadequate reaction of the communicators of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the personal reaction of the ex-minister to each of these stories. And this is only the top, that is, the most important actions of the minister that led to his removal from office, and there are also a large number of necessary and important actions and legislation that were not implemented.
But then only victories, and how else? Even if by some miracle Reznikov does not fly as an ambassador to Great Britain (and suddenly political figures in London dare and do not want to welcome him in their country), he will definitely not end up in a pre-trial detention center with his ex-deputy Viacheslav Shapovalov and the head of the procurement department Bohdan Khmelnytskyi. Despite everything, Reznikov is persona grata, a statesman and a leader. Such social capital for corruption in the entrusted ministry can be acquired only in Ukraine. Also, in the resignation letter, it was noted not as a reason for dismissal, but as an achievement that "reforms in the field of procurement have been carried out in the Defense Department of Ukraine."
The new Minister of Defense of Ukraine is Rustem Umerov, head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine. It is good that we have so many vacant positions of ambassadors. Well, at least in this way we fill the need for them.
We will not stop at the one who proposed at the start of the negotiations on the grain agreement to sell ALL our grain to Turkey, analyze who was part of the delegation that brought extremely dubious proposals for negotiations to the same Turkey and Belarus, we will not mention who was even before the war mediator during the conflict between the Bankova Street and Akhmetov. Let's analyze what Umerov is praised for.
Umerov's current achievements in the State Property Fund of Ukraineare, rather, the achievements of his predecessors, who established normal competitive sales of objects of the so-called small privatization.
It's like opening a store "everything for 10 hryvnias" and being happy that someone is always coming there. Oh, we have a ten-year record – in eight months of 2023, the Fund traded for UAH 2.5 billion! Seriously?! In 2021, under Dmytro Sennichenko, the annual profit from privatization amounted to UAH 5.1 billion, that is, for eight months of 2021, it was somewhere around UAH 3.5 billion.
And this, too, I note, was a ten-year record, and Umyerov did not break it at all: for Sennichenko, on average, they traded for 400 million hryvnias per month, for Umyerov - for 300 million.
Remind me, by the way, where is Sennychenko now? In general, he is starting a new life somewhere in Spain, but here, in Ukraine, he is wanted on suspicion of creating a criminal organization and seizing the funds of the Odesa Port Plant (OPZ) and the United Mining and Chemical Company JSC (UMCC). It turns out that the number of canteens and clubs sold is not such a relevant criterion for evaluating the managerial qualities of the head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine. Umerov's real crash test would be large-scale privatization, the same " OPZ" and "UMCC".
An adult boutique, next to "everything for 10 hryvnias", should be operational by the end of the year. Believe me, Umerov really wanted to leave the Foundation by this time.
It's simple, big privatization is not so much about big money, but about a big (literally state-scale) trouble. All these "investment pearls" of ours are very troubled, unprofitable, in debt and with legal problems. In addition, these projects are often associated with suspicious and untrustworthy ownership structures, controlled by various and fast-moving "groups of influence" and never controlled by the state in the role of the State Property Fund of Ukraine.
If ten years ago we could still sort through offers, saying that the main thing when selling is not to reduce the price, now we would simply have to find crazy people who would at least come to look at the assortment.
The state's approach would be as follows: to deal with legal problems and, if possible, with the debts of the companies, to put the assets in order, finding the lost funds, restoring influence and "losing" in the process all the people with whom the companies had business dealings over the years. Not so much for the sake of price, although that also matters, as for the sake of demand as such. It's not about whether to sell Zaporozhets on the go tinted and washed or dirty and rusted. We sell Zaporozhets without rear wheels, front seats and carburetor. No one will take such a car even for disassembly for parts.
How we are doing with the search for carburetors in the days of injectors is well illustrated by the sale of the Investagro company, currently the first and very conditionally large asset that the State Property Fund of Ukraine tried to sell. The company's debt is UAH 17 million, the value of assets is less than UAH 4 million, and all real estate has been seized. They sold it as is, there was only one condition - to repay the debts to the budget and employees in the first half of the year, totaling one million hryvnias. No one came to the first auction, nor did the second "half price" auction take place. It's a wonder no one takes such a good offer!
Of course, the State Property Fund of Ukraine should try to reduce the debt burden, remove encumbrances on property, and collect debts from counterparties (which is 40% of the company's balance sheet value), but Rustem Umyerov professes other approaches. Wise people usually say about such people: "He will do everything possible to get away with it." Is there a place for such politicians in a key department that provides the front? Because Umerov often took part in loud and unpleasant scandals?
Thus, he is not a very valuable employee for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, a warring country, which in the last six months has not been able to get out of corruption scandals and throughout the war – from managerial chaos. So it is unlikely that these problems will be reduced under the new minister. It definitely increases the number of Turkish goods in our purchases, which are already similar to the Istanbul bazaar. In addition, the influence of the emphatically neutral Erdogan on our domestic politics, which is already quite strong, will increase. And now this influence has already become so strong that Western partners are not so much partners, Turks, emirs and Chinese hang around Ukraine and do not make any demands on it, they just give money. Umerov perfectly implements this state of affairs, that is, the increase in the foreign policy influence of other countries on Ukraine and the allocation of money for our country without unnecessary questions.
Instead of Umerov, the State Property Fund of Ukraine will be managed by Olha Pishchanska from the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine... Anyone who follows the state of affairs of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine knows why there are three dots at the end of the sentence.
Since 2019, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine has been chronically forgetting to draw up any work plans, so reporting is very simple and easy. After all, judging by their reports, they are always well done, they are always doing very well and they do their job well! The work is in full swing and fines for the image of the medicinal herb chamomile on mint shampoo are issued regularly. The coefficient of effectiveness, which the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine has made for itself in relation to the number of issued (unpaid) fines, is more than before the war. Everyone would like it!
In terms of really important things, such as cartel conspiracies, concentrations or the same public purchases, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine does nothing.
For example, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine is deliberately sabotaging the government's decision from October 2021 to create within the structure of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine a commission to consider complaints in the field of public procurement, the same ones that opened Reznikov's way to London. Really, who needs it?! The liquidation of the case about "Rotterdam+" and a small fine to the representatives of the company Donbas fuel and energy company DTEK for abusing the monopoly position in the amber deposits is also Pischanska. Ignoring consumer complaints about the illegal structure and abuse of representatives of the Donbas fuel and energy company DTEK in the electricity market – Pishchanska. It is also worth mentioning the fine of five billion hryvnias of the Kolomoisky gas station network, which he was forgiven – Pishchanska.
She is probably a Confucian – she sits on the bank of the river and waits for the corpses of all the violators of competition in the country to float by.
The main achievement of Pishchanska in the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine is the total disbelief of all those who cared about the reform of the competition agency in Ukraine, that it is possible at all. This is not a poetic exaggeration. We have already described the work front at the State Property Fund of Ukraine. What will Pischanska improve there? Unless your financial situation.
In her place, the position at the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine will probably be headed by Pavlo Kyrylenko, a lawyer, military prosecutor and head of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration since 2019.
Considering that the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine is a collegial body, Kyrylenka has two options. Or to find a common language with the current composition of this institution, which is not called otherwise than "friends of Pishchanska and Shershun", in this case we do not expect any changes at all. Or trying to teach cats to bark, to do something impossible when faced with incredible resistance, both purely physiological and reinforced by already acquired habits of a rich life. We are not considering the option of changing the composition of the committee, because the president appoints the commissioners, and not only the lawyer Kolomoiskyi Shershun, but also the daughter of a university teacher Zelenskyy, passed his quality personnel selection. By the way, Pishchanska herself was hired at the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine not through an ordinary employment site or someone who simply read her well-written resume – her sister managed the Italian firm San Tomasso, whose beneficiary before the election was Zelenskyy himself. This is such a high level of connections!
So, in the end, personnel policy came down to the fact that some bad managers were replaced by other bad ones, completely ignoring their "achievements" in previous positions. The only one who was punished in this story is Kyrylenko, he just hasn't understood it yet. The rest continue to build careers, leading to even greater decline of the state management bodies that they will lead. Let me remind you that we are talking about the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the State Property Fund of Ukraine and the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, that is, quite important departments.
This time it is unlikely, but for the future, the next Memorandum with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will have to be made from one point on the quality selection of high-ranking officials, so that there will be competitions with broadcasts, test tasks, and the involvement of international recruiters. Because the negative selection as a consequence of the concentration of power in our case already reaches some unprecedented scale. The personnel problem that Zelenskyy started with has already grown into a personnel disaster, and he has not even finished eliminating this problem yet.
As long as the selection criteria remain loyalty, PR activity and sneaking, and the special services are not capable of conducting real personnel checks, we cannot count on competent people and there is no point in even discussing personnel changes. This government will reproduce itself again and again, like signs in stores, changing one favorite of Yermak for another.
It's scary to imagine where all these "friends" from Bankova Street will eventually lead us. But it can already be said for sure that they are rapidly distancing us from the civilized world both figuratively and in a very real way – remember R. Shurma's presentation in London.