Editor’s note: Every week Kyiv Post journalist Oleg Sukhov picks a winner and loser in Ukraine’s drive to transform itself into a rule-of-law, European-style democracy.
Reformer of the Week: Viktor Chumak
Chief Military Prosecutor Viktor Chumak is one of the reformers appointed by Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka.
Chumak got the job of chief military prosecutor and deputy prosecutor general on Sept. 11.
On Sept. 16, he canceled previous Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoly Matios’ decision to make the asset declarations of military prosecutors secret.
Chumak also said on Sept. 13 he would investigate the massacre of hundreds of Ukrainian troops by Russian troops during the Battle of Ilovaisk in 2014. So far, there has been little progress in the investigation into military commanders’ negligence or incompetence.
Riaboshapka also appointed another reformer, Vitaly Kasko, as his first deputy on Sept. 5.
However, Yuriy Stolyarchuk, Serhiy Kiz and Nazar Kholodnytsky remain deputy prosecutor generals. All of them have been connected to corruption scandals and have been accused of sabotaging criminal cases, although they deny the accusations.
Riaboshapka has said he was not planning to fire Kiz, who did not respond to requests for comment.
Anti-reformer of the Week: Oleksandr Tupitsky
Oleksandr Tupitsky was elected the head of the Constitutional Court on Sept. 17 to replace Natalia Shaptala, whose authority had expired. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Tupitsky has a controversial background.
In 1999 Tupitsky, then a judge in Donetsk, tried journalist Serhiy Salov, who was accused of spreading fake news that then President Leonid Kuchma was dead. Tupitsky sentenced him to five years in prison for libel.
The verdict was later canceled by the European Court of Human Rights as unlawful.
According to tapes released in 2000, Kuchma allegedly told Viktor Yanukovych, then governor of Donetsk Oblast, to pressure Tupitsky to make a necessary ruling against Salov.
Tupitsky later got a career boost from Yanukovych, who then became president and appointed him as a judge of the Constitutional Court in 2013.
Tupitsky’s asset declarations have also raised questions about the origin of his wealth.
Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court is currently considering the constitutionality of the 2014 lustration law on the firing of top officials who served Yanukovych.
One of the officials subject to lustration is President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan.
In April, the Schemes investigative journalism project reported that then Constitutional Court Chairman Stanislav Shevchuk had met with Bohdan at the Constitutional Court on March 13. They denied discussing the lustration law.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have prepared a notice of suspicion for one of the former judges of the Constitutional Court, according to investigator Sergii Gorbatuk. Judges of the Constitutional Court are accused of changing the Constitution to unlawfully expand Yanukovych’s powers.
