On March 22, the new Ukrainian government completed the formation of the senior management team at Naftogaz Ukraine, the state oil and gas company (Interfax-Ukraine, UNIAN, March 22; Kommersant, March 23). This team is directly answerable to Fuel and Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko and, equally but informally, to RosUkrEnergo gas trader Dmytro Firtash, an industrial tycoon in his own right, closely allied with Boyko.
Boyko’s appointment as minister was widely expected; and apprehensively so, outside the government’s orbit. He had served in both previous governments headed by the newly elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. In the new government, an informal division of spheres has placed Boyko in charge of the oil and gas sectors, allowing interest groups associated with First Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuyev to control the electricity and nuclear sectors (Ukraiynska Pravda, March 13).
Boyko is regarded as “godfather” to the “supply schemes” with Gazprom’s offshoots, EuralTransGas and RosUkrEnergo, devised in 2002-2004. Boyko was first deputy minister of fuel and energy and chairman of Naftogaz Ukraine in the first Yanukovych government at that time. He was also identified as a member of RosUkrEnergo’s coordinating council in 2004, while holding those official posts (Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, March 13).
Boyko returned to government as fuel and energy minister in the second Yanukovych government during 2006-2007, by which time RosUkrEnergo was operating under then-president Viktor Yushchenko’s dispensation.
Firtash headed the Ukrainian side of EuralTransGas in 2002-2004 and RosUkrEnergo from 2006 onward. Firtash and Boyko have a close and continuing personal relationship. However, Firtash also established a temporary alliance with Yushchenko, whose energy team actually implemented the RosUkrEnergo scheme that Boyko was instrumental in devising. Firtash owned 45 percent of RosUkrEnergo’s shares, with his Ukrainian partner Ivan Fursin owning 5 percent, and Gazprom 50 percent. Yulia Tymoshenko’s government ultimately removed RosUkrEnergo from the Russian-Ukrainian gas trade in early 2009, by agreement with Moscow.
At present, Firtash seeks compensation for 11 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas, which he claims was taken from RosUkrEnergo’s storage in Ukraine in 2009. Although removed from the inter-state gas trade, Firtash remains in control of a diversified industrial holding, Group DF (Dmytro Firtash). Furthermore, he is a major stakeholder in the Independent TV corporation, which includes Ukraine’s top-rated Inter TV channel. This has made Firtash a key player in Ukrainian elections, with influence he can leverage on the post-election government. Inter TV’s news coverage is supportive of the Party of Regions (EDM, March 18).
The new government has appointed Yevhen Bakulyn as chairman of Naftogaz Ukraine. A protйgй of Boyko throughout their careers, Bakulyn served as second in command to Boyko at the Lysychansk oil refinery, then as head of Ukraine’s gas extraction and processing company Ukrgazvydobuvannya (fully owned subsidiary of Naftogaz Ukraine) in 2003-04 and 2006, and finally as the Chairman of Naftogaz in 2007, when Boyko was a minister in the second Yanukovych government (Interfax-Ukraine, March 15; Kommersant [Kyiv], March 16).
Returning to Naftogaz in the new Yanukovych government, Bakulyn and two of his aides have published an article calling for shared control of Ukraine’s gas transit system with Gazprom in an international consortium (“2000” weekly magazine [Kyiv] cited by Interfax-Ukraine, March 19).
Ukrtransgaz, the operator of Ukraine’s vast system of transit pipelines and storage sites, will be headed by Serhiy Vinokurov under the new government. Ukrtransgaz is a fully owned subsidiary of Naftogaz Ukraine; but it will almost certainly be separated from Naftogaz, whether in the process of Western-recommended reform or by transfer to a Gazprom-dominated consortium. Vinokurov was chief adviser to Boyko when the latter headed Naftogaz. He was recently identified as a board member of Ostchem Holding, controlled by Firtash (Interfax-Ukraine, March 22).
Yuriy Borysov is the newly appointed head of Ukrgazvydobuvannya, the gas extraction and processing subsidiary fully owned by Naftogaz. Borysov has been identified as director-general of Firtash’s Ostchem Holding and as a board member of Firtash’s Group DF (UNIAN, March 22; Kommersant, March 23).
Reflecting Boyko’s and Firtash’s political clout in the Party of Regions, each has successfully pushed through the appointment of a protйgй as regional governor. The new governor of the Kyiv region is Boyko’s confidant Anatoliy Prysyazhnyuk, who had earlier headed Chornomor Naftogaz (offshore oil and gas activities) under Boyko as minister. Dismissed by the Yulia Tymoshenko government in 2009, Prysyazhnyuk was appointed as the Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) by then-president Yushchenko. In the Chernivtsi region, Firtash has managed to have his local confidant, Mykhaylo Papiyev, appointed as governor. Firtash is not a native of Chernivtsi region, but made his business debut in that region, and retains a special relationship with it (Ukraiynska Pravda, March 19).
Global Witness, the London-based NGO specializing in anti-corruption investigations, has issued a statement of concern in response to such appointments. Familiar with Ukrainian energy issues since its 2006 investigative report on RosUkrEnergo, Global Witness warns against a reversal of reforms in the Ukrainian energy sector and calls on the Yanukovych government to show that Ukraine can be an open and reliable partner to the European Union (Financial Times, March 13).
Vladimir Socor is a political analyst for the Jamestown Foundation and its Eurasia Daily Monitor. The column originally appeared at jamestown.org.
