Interior Minister Arsen Avakov filed a letter of resignation on July 13. Now it has to be approved by the parliament.
The resignation letter was published on the Interior Ministry’s website.
Avakov has remained in power since February 2014. He has served under two presidents and four prime ministers, commanding an army of 200,000 law enforcers in the Interior Ministry. Some described him as Ukraine’s “second-in-command” after President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Over the years, Avakov earned a controversial reputation and became mired in corruption scandals. The police reform that took place under Avakov is largely seen as superficial and unsuccessful. High-profile cases remained unsolved. Avakov’s annual declarations revealed the vast riches he acquired despite having spent most of his life in public service.
Avakov’s letter doesn’t provide a reason for resigning:
“To the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. In accordance with Article 18, part 1, of the Law ‘On the Cabinet of Ministers’ I ask that you accept my resignation as interior minister of Ukraine.”
The law to which Avakov refers allows a member of the Cabinet of Ministers to resign voluntarily, as opposed to being fired by the prime minister.
On his printed resignation letter, Avakov added in handwriting: “Honored to have served!”
He also posted a smiling selfie on Facebook, thanking his team and “every officer and official” for their work.
Now 226 lawmakers have to support Avakov’s resignation. The Verkhovna Rada has meetings scheduled on July 14-16.
Zelensky and his allies have been rumored to plan Avakov’s resignation because of disloyalty. He has refused to vote for some of the National Security and Defense Council’s decisions.
Zelensky has also hinted that Avakov could be fired due to his failure to successfully resolve the 2016 murder of Belarusian journalist Pavel Sheremet.
Initially Avakov was lambasted for failing to find any suspects for years. But since three suspects were charged in 2019, no hard evidence has been presented against them, and all of them have been released from detention facilities.
Successor
On the evening of July 13, hours after Avakov announced his resignation, Zelensky met with the lawmakers representing his party, Servant of the People (244 seats).
At the meeting, Zelensky proposed the candidacy of Denys Monastyrsky as a replacement for Avakov.
Monastyrsky, 40, is a lawyer and a lawmaker with the Servant of the People. He is the head of the parliament’s Law Enforcement Committee.
“I decided to take this step, the hardest one in my life, and seek the post of the interior minister,” Monastyrsky told journalists at a briefing after the lawmakers’ meeting with Zelensky.
According to Monastyrsky, the relevant committee of the parliament will approve Avakov’s resignation letter on July 14, and the parliament will vote for it on July 15. Then, on July 16, the parliament will vote for his candidacy.
“(Monastyrsky) has enough diplomatic and management skills to perform this job,” said David Arakhamia, a lawmaker and head of the Servant of the People faction, commenting on Monastyrsky’s candidacy after the meeting with Zelensky. “I have a feeling that we can get more than 300 votes in the parliament for his candidacy.”
Both Monastyrsky and Arakhamia refused to comment on Avakov’s performance as interior minister.
Monastyrsky himself has links to Avakov. He used to be an aide to Avakov’s current deputy Anton Gerashchenko and was reportedly part of “Avakov’s quota” on the Servant of the People party list in the 2019 parliamentary election.
Avakov is expected to address the parliament with a report about his seven years in office on July 14.
Shortly before Avakov resigned, Ukrainian magazine Novoe Vremya reported, citing its sources, that another candidate to replace Avakov was Oleksiy Danylov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Danylov rose to prominence in the recent months due to the council’s high-profile rulings that imposed sanctions on oligarchs and politicians, most famously Viktor Medvedchuk and Dmytro Firtash.
Rise of Avakov
Avakov, an ethnic Armenian born in Baku, Azerbaijan, started off as a businessman in Kharkiv in the violent 1990s, a period of messy and chaotic business conflicts.
He became the governor of Kharkiv Oblast in 2005, allying himself with pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, who was then president.
After Viktor Yanukovych, a political enemy of Avakov, came to power in 2010, Avakov fled to Italy.
In 2012 the Prosecutor General’s Office charged Avakov with abuse of power by illegally privatizing 55 hectares of government land worth more than Hr 5.5 million. Avakov described the case as a political vendetta but anti-corruption activists and lawyers argue the case had substance despite Yanukovych’s political motives.
Avakov got his chance at political power in the 2013–2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted Yanukovych. At that time, Avakov was appointed interior minister.
He initially forged a tactical alliance with ex-President Petro Poroshenko, who was elected in May 2014, as part of a coalition between Avakov’s People’s Front party and the Poroshenko Bloc. But they fell out quickly as the rivalry between the parties grew.
Avakov also allied himself with business magnate Ihor Kolomoisky in 2014 when they began creating volunteer battalions fighting Russia and its proxies in eastern Ukraine, Fesenko said. This alliance appears to have remained in place.
In the 2019 presidential election, Avakov again made the right bet by effectively backing Poroshenko’s rivals and investigating alleged voting fraud by the former president.
As a result, he was re-appointed as interior minister under the Zelensky administration despite his toxic reputation.
Corruption accusations
Avakov and his allies have been mired in numerous corruption scandals.
In 2017 Avakov’s son Oleksandr and Avakov’s ex-deputy Serhiy Chebotar were arrested and charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine with embezzling Hr 14 million in a case related to the supply of overpriced backpacks to the Interior Ministry.
In video footage leaked by the Security Service of Ukraine, Oleksandr Avakov and Chebotar discuss a corrupt scheme to supply backpacks to the National Guard in Chebotar’s office.
Meanwhile, in another video leaked by the service, Chebotar, the Interior Ministry’s State Secretary Oleksiy Takhtai and state firm Spetsvervis CEO Vasyl Petrivsky, an ex-aide to Avakov, in Chebotar’s office negotiate a corrupt deal to sell sand at a rigged auction.
In the video, Chebotar implicates the minister himself in the deal, saying that Avakov is also aware of the scheme and is worried that the sand has not been sold yet.
Avakov claimed the video was fake.
However, Petrivsky has already pled guilty and has been convicted to a suspended prison term in a theft case for the sand sale scheme described in the video.
According to Ukraine’s court register, the video was recorded by the Security Service of Ukraine and has been recognized as genuine.
In yet another video being investigated by the NABU, Avakov’s former deputy Vadym Troyan and Chebotar discuss corrupt revenues from the traffic police and extorting money from businesspeople. In 2018 the Security Service of Ukraine and prosecutors said that three associates of Troyan had been arrested for extorting an Hr 1.5 million bribe.
