With one reformer after another leaving government, it was a surprise to see President Volodymyr Zelensky tap one of the most effective reformers, Yuriy Vitrenko, as acting energy minister.
The fact that Zelensky couldn’t command enough votes in parliament to get Vitrenko confirmed underscores how far and how fast the president has fallen in popularity — especially when his Servant of the People party still holds a nominal majority in parliament of 246 members.
But Zelensky and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal showed uncharacteristic fight, for a change. The Cabinet of Ministers on Dec. 21 named Vitrenko as acting energy minister and as first deputy energy minister while the president tries to get a majority in parliament to approve him permanently.
If the government would have acted with such zeal and skill earlier, Zelensky might not be in the position he is now: fighting for his political life. Ukraine would have been far better off with the likes of Oleksandr Danylyuk, Aivaras Abromavicius, Serhiy Verlanov, Oksana Markarova, Andriy Zahorodniuk, Serhiy Verlanov, Max Nefyodov, Oleksiy Honcharuk, Ruslan Riaboshapka and, yes, Andriy Bohdan in government. Instead, all of those people were run out for no good reason that we can see.
But let’s make progress wherever we can. Vitrenko as energy minister is a start. Without energy security, Ukraine will have no national security. It’s not just a matter of weaning off imports of natural gas and oil. Vitrenko has the savvy and public interest in mind to attract foreign investment in exploration and to figure out how to make Naftogaz (his former employer) more effective. In May, when he left the company that he helped transform into a profitable state enterprise from a corrupt oligarch playground, he called for liquidating or privatizing it.
Vitrenko has the fighting spirit and stamina required to engage in the strategic battles that Ukraine needs to win. Among them is to continue pressing legal cases against Russia and its state-controlled Gazprom for the assets it has stolen in Crimea and the Black Sea after the Kremlin’s military invasion in 2014. Ukraine could win $17.5 billion worth of claims, on top of the $2.9 billion that Vitrenko helped Ukraine secure in an arbitration court.
Vitrenko is also progressive enough to work with energy giant DTEK and other players to shift away from nuclear power, coal-fired electricity and other polluting sources and into the future of carbon neutrality and renewables. Such a future requires energy production to be decentralized and competitive, not in the hands of a few oligarchs.
In a year of setbacks and stalls for reform, Vitrenko — often touted as a future prime minister — is a bright star, hopefully not a shooting one, on the horizon.
