It definitely feels like a change of culture at the National Bank of Ukraine, from the collegiate, flat structure under previous governors Valerie Gontareva and Yakov Smoliy back to a more old school, centralized management under Kyrylo Shevchenko.
Shevchenko, I think, likes to keep a firm grip on the institution, and most things are run through him. So deputy governors speaking to the media and highlighting some of the challenges will likely not go down very well.
I am still asking why President Volodymyr Zelensky felt the need to remove Smoliy last year and replace him with Shevchenko given that, at least on the monetary and exchange rate front, not that much has changed. I think there’s this old school (tempted to say legacy Soviet-style) idea of loyalty, and ensuring that the NBU is not seen as a source of criticism of broader economic policy in the country.
Under Gontareva and Smoliy, board members were active in trying to push the broader reform agenda forward and that quite often meant being vocal where they saw backward movement, particularly in their areas of competence, and therein it is related mostly to the challenges facing the banking sector.
I guess given the attacks they found themselves under around the PrivatBank issue, and more broadly oligarchs who had lost their banks in 2015-2017, and often from the Verkhovna Rada, and from within the Servant of the People faction in the Rada, they felt cornered and unsupported by the government and hence felt the need to speak out.
The extremity of those attacks – homes and car attacks, death threats – I guess provoked very emotive language often.
This was heartfelt. This likely would have come across as disloyal by some of those around Zelensky. Hence I guess that might explain the push to clear out the former management at the NBU and replace them with someone who might have been expected to owe a debt of loyalty to the administration for his appointment.
I don’t even want to get into the argument that supporters of billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, member of parliament Oleksandr Dubinsky et al, were pushing the agenda to clear out the reformers from the NBU. Their constant criticism, and undermining, of the former NBU management, certainly did not help matters.
