War-weary Donetsk Oblast got its third governor in less than a year. President Petro Poroshenko on June 11 appointed Pavlo Zhebrivskyi and publicly introduced him in the coastal city of Mariupol, the Azov Sea port city 20 kilometers west of the war front.
The president noted
that, Zhebrivskyi, 53, had served in the eastern combat zone as a volunteer in
an army intelligence unit and took part in the Battle of Debaltseve. A former member of parliament, Zhebrivskyi
had used his extensive political experience in the military’s effort to work
with the local population on the front.
Poroshenko said that
his dual political and military experience was the perfect fit for the tasks that lie ahead in
the troubled region, parts of which are still subjected to almost daily attacks
from Russian-separatist forces. “We have to regain the loyalty of the souls
poisoned by Russian propaganda – that’s even more important than to take
territory back,” he said in a statement published on the presidential website.
The first major test
for the new governor is to conduct a clean local election scheduled for Oct.
25. They are a precondition for Ukraine to move forward with decentralization,
and implement measures that would distribute more authority and functions to
local governments, the president said.
It was a brave move by
Zhebrivskyi to accept the gubernatorial position, experts said. The regional
headquarters is located in the town of Kramatorsk, some 90 kilometers north of
Russian occupied Donetsk. The town is also the Ukrainian military’s eastern
headquarters in the Russia-provoked war.
Poroshenko’s personal
trust was a crucial factor for the key war-time appointment, Volodymyr Fesenko,
director of the Penta Center for Political Research, told Hvylya, a local media
outlet. Zhebrivskyi is a seasoned politician, “but he never dealt with the
difficult Donetsk region before and that could become his main problem,”
Fesenko said.
He added that the
immediate reason for the governor’s reshuffle was the president’s
dissatisfaction with the construction of defensive fortifications along the
front line, which is the governor’s purview.
Zhebrivskyi’s
predecessor was former army general Oleksandr Kikhtenko who was appointed in
October. He succeeded Donetsk Oblast native and businessman Serhiy Taruta who
was brought in as a crisis manager to the economically depressed region in
March 2014, immediately after the EuroMaidan Revolution. Pursuing a critically
outspoken yet pro-Ukrainian line, he fell out with Poroshenko.
Zhebrivskyi was the
first head of the high profile special anti-corruption unit of the General
Prosecutor’s office when it was formed in January. He is considered a
Poroshenko ally, having served as deputy head of his Solidarty party in the
early 2000’s.
This is not
Zhebrivskyi’s first gubernatorial appointment. He headed his native Zhytomyr
Oblast in February-December 2005 under the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko. He
was elected to parliament on Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party ticket in 2002,
2006 and 2007. He then headed the new party Sobor, which unsuccessfully
campaigned in the 2012 election. He unsuccessfully ran for parliament again
last year in a single-mandate constituency in Zhytomyr Oblast.
In August he was
one of the first former lawmakers to volunteer for the army, serving with the rank
of sergeant.
His sister, Filya
Zhebrivskaya, is the CEO of Kyiv-based Farmak, Ukraine’s biggest pharmaceutical
company. Forbes estimated her net worth to be $90 million in 2014.
Kyiv Post staff writer
Johannes Wamberg Andersen can be reached at [email protected].
