Now here's a development: Ihor Kononenko, who was the man at the center of the kerfuffle surrounding the resignation of Ukrainian Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius this week, says he is stepping aside as deputy chairman of President Petro Poroshenko's parliamentary bloc -- at least for now.
As the last tweet we embedded suggests, Kyiv Post editor Brian Bonner's hard-hitting assessment of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's performance on tackling corruption is generating a bit of heat on social media. Here's a taster of what he has to say:
Poroshenko promised to change the corrupt and useless criminal justice system. He did not.
Instead, he and Yatsenyuk have proven skillful in obstructing changes – especially when their allies attempted to jeopardize the independence of new anti-corruption bodies.
The obstructionism ensures that corruption – old and new – will remain unpunished.
I have interviewed each of these three ministers who resigned – Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko, Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarsky and Abromavicius. Each of them sent criminal cases against Yanukovych-era predecessors to the prosecutor’s office, only to have them sink into a black hole. Each of them complained about the bureaucracy and about their inability to fire corrupt managers of state-owned enterprises. While they didn’t complain about Poroshenko or Yatsenyuk during the interviews I had with them, it seemed clear to me that they weren’t getting the backing they needed.
Ukraine’s top political leaders will simply not give up their power to decide who goes to jail and who doesn’t and leave these issues to judges, prosecutors, and police – or better yet, citizen juries.
So Poroshenko keeps a useless prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who leads 15,000 useless prosecutors.
Poroshenko keeps 9,000 judges, most of whom are useless and corrupt as well.
Yatsenyuk keeps a useless interior minister, Arsen Avakov.
And meanwhile, allegations of corruption – yes, all denied – swirl around Shokin, Avakov and too many police, prosecutors and judges to name.
Bottom line: Law enforcement has delivered nothing but injustice two years after the EuroMaidan Revolution. And as long as they get to call the shots, that’s the way Poroshenko and Yatensyuk want it.
Read the entire article here
A tweet from the spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry: