The "grey eminence of Kiev" and what is (really) behind Kuleba's resignation
In the meantime Ukraine's debt has been "restructured".
Following up my short article this morning, here is my English translation of an article, originally in Italian, by Clara Statello, published on L’AntiDiplomatico this afternoon. (Emphasis mine).
A flurry of resignations in the Kiev government in less than 24 hours. The president of the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) Ruslan Stefenchuk has since last night received resignation letters from:
Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Denis Malyuska, Minister of Justice;
Olexander Kamyshin, Minister of Strategic Industries,
Ruslan Strelets, Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources,
Olga Stefanishina, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration,
Irina Vereshchuk, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine
Vitaly Koval, Head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine.
The deputy head of the presidential office Rostislav Shurma was also removed. The shower of resignations is not the consequence of the rapidly deteriorating situation on the Pokrovsk front. It should not be seen as a government crisis, but as a maxi reshuffle that had actually been in the air for months.
“I have already spoken about the revitalisation of our leadership, of ministers in many ministries, today we need a new structure, and these steps are related to the strengthening of our state in several stages”, said President Volodymir Zelensky.
There is talk of replacing Shurma with Kamyshin, while Stefanishina is expected to go to Justice and Vereshuck to the President's office as deputy head for social policy. New appointments are expected tomorrow. The parliamentary group leader of the Servant of the People party, David Arakhamia, Volodymyr Zelensky's trusted man, said that the changes will affect 50 per cent of the government members.
If the removals in the past few days of the air force chief Mycola Oleshuck, the Ukrenergo chief Vladimir Kudrytsky, and the chief of staff of the new unmanned systems command, Roman Gradky (appointed on Friday 30 August and removed yesterday) are a consequence of the difficulties of the Ukrainian armed forces in the air defence and the Donbass front, the political earthquake is only partly related to the course of the war. The most well-founded reason is the centralisation of power in the hands of one man, the grey eminence behind Zelensky.
Kuleba's resignation
The letter of resignation of Minister Kuleba, the top diplomat who most of all embodied Kiev's pro-NATO and pro-EU line and cultivated relations with the West, in particular with the head of US diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, caused a stir. There was already talk of his removal last spring, however, after the resounding change in the Ukrainian military leadership.
At the beginning of March, Strana wrote, citing anonymous sources close to the presidency, that Zelensky was considering moving him to another post (perhaps as ambassador to London, later assigned to General Zaluzhny) due to complaints from the president's office, headed by Andriy Yermak, about the foreign service and embassy management.
More than reasons, however, these would be pretexts. Kuleba's removal should be seen as one of Yermak's many moves to get his men into key government posts and maintain exclusivity over relations with Western partners.
“In short, in Bankova they want everyone in government to be like Prime Minister Shmygal. Work, don't play politics and don't talk nonsense. Then you will be noticed and praised or even promoted! Those who realise this are well within the current ‘military’ power system. Those who do not fit the simple criteria specified, however, will be excluded”, another source told Strana.
Bloomberg writes that Kuleba will now “focus on strengthening Ukraine's relations with NATO”, without specifying anything else. It speculates that he will be replaced by his deputy, Andriy Sibiha, who is precisely Yermak's man. From 2021 until mid-April he was deputy head of the President's Office. His transfer to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Kuleba's deputy raised suspicions as to whether he would keep his post.
Zelensky had previously entrusted his chief advisor with the so-called peace plan and engagement with the South. This suggests that Kiev had been preparing for the replacement of the foreign minister for some time.
What to expect from the maxi reshuffle
The government and even the Verkhovna Rada have long ceased to be “decision-making centres” in Ukraine. It is the president's office that has concentrated this power on itself. So little depends on the government reshuffle and little will change.
Yermak is now the real foreign minister. Whoever is appointed in Kuleba's place will not play a decisive role in Ukraine's foreign policy.
The main functions of this reshuffle will be twofold: to distract from the disastrous situation in south-eastern Ukraine and to shift the responsibility for it onto cabinet members and some military commanders. This is probably the reason why it is happening now.
“The autumn will be extremely important for Ukraine. And our state institutions must be configured in such a way that Ukraine achieves all the necessary results. To do this, we need to strengthen certain areas of the government and decisions on personnel have already been prepared”, the president said yesterday.
The massive government clean-up will show the public that the president is aware of the people's problems and is therefore carrying out a power reset to organise a more efficient work of the state apparatus.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s debt has been “restructured” and thus discounted to avoid paying the accrued interest, as reported by Reuters. And this is how, thanks to the advice of the Rothschild company, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has devalued Kiev's bonds by 37%!
This mechanism, thanks to the special cooperation of the Outlaw US Empire and some if its vassal states, namely UK, Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, will allow Zelensky to avoid paying an estimated USD 11.4 billion in interest on government debt!
On the other hand, there are countries in the world that are starving because of debt and loan shark behaviour by the authorities working for the Outlaw US Empire (i.e. IMF and World Bank, just to name a couple): they cannot recover and often go bankrupt (e.g. Greece).
Thank you for the excellent translation of the article about Elensky's government "reshuffling" and also for your analysis of Ukraine's debt "restructuring".
In my humble opinion, Kiev politically is much alike the French expression "panier de crabes" (a basket of crabs, that pinch each other without achieving anything to get out of the basket), in this case we have a bunch of US puppets trying to out-corrupt each other while destroying their own country and killing their own people. However, no rearranging of the deck chairs on the Kiev Titanic will change the course of the war.
As for Ukraine's debt, everybody knows it will never be repayed - or actually yes, it will be repayed - by US and EU taxpayers, directly to the banks that cynically made the loans to Ukraine, with the full knowledge that Ukraine would be destroyed.
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope." - Smedley D. Butler
I just watched Dmitry Orlov's latest interview on Dialogue Works YT channel and he made an interesting remark about the group of people in Kiev that handed in their resignation. Basically he said this group are non-essential government officials and are just "cashing out" (the metaphor refers to lucky gamblers leaving a casino, when they exchange their chips for real money) before the Kiev regime collapses, and their replacements will also try to steal as much as possible before the entire "Project Ukraine" disintegrates. Where did we see that kind of stealing happening recently? Yes, Kabul, August 2021. The final days of the Kiev regime will be interesting to watch...