Ukraine’s president-elect, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has returned from a short vacation in Turkey and is now preparing to be sworn into office by the end of May. Parliament has not yet set the date of the inauguration ceremony, but law sets the deadline at June 2.
Much about Zelenskiy’s plans remain unclear. But Yuriy Kostyuk, a screenwriter at Zelenskiy’s Kvartal 95 production studio and a member of his presidential campaign, has shed some light onto the inauguration plans in an interview with the Ukrainska Pravda news site published on May 2.
According to Kostyuk, Zelenskiy’s inauguration ceremony at parliament might be unlike anything ever seen before in Ukraine.
“We’re thinking about different ‘special features.’ It’s clear that there’s an official procedure, which we (also) respect,” Kostyuk said.
Zelenskiy’s team thought they could take the lawmakers to another location for the ceremony — something not unlike the campaign’s decision to turn the presidential debate into a live show at a football stadium.
But that would require changing official regulations: the law states that a new president must take their oath at the parliament session, and another law stipulates that parliament sessions take place in the building of parliament, at 5 Hrushevshkoho St. in Kyiv.
“In other words, there are historical procedures that we have to respect and follow,” Kostyuk said. “We’ll come up with something else. We’re in the process of discussion. I don’t want to disclose all the secrets. I think that such inauguration has never been before. I can say that it will be interesting.”
Kostyuk also shed light on when Zelenskiy plans to name his nominees for top national security and foreign policy positions: not until he is sworn in, the screenwriter said.
By Ukrainian law, the president nominates his candidates for the SBU security service chief, the Prosecutor General, the ministers of defense and foreign affairs, the General Staff head, and the central bank chairman. Parliament approves their appointments.
“As soon as the team enters the presidential administration, they will get access to full information,” Kostyuk said.
“We can’t name the SBU chief or, for instance, the Prosecutor General because it’s one thing to name a person and another to appoint him or her. At the moment, we don’t have the resources to check the people completely in the way they have to be checked: on whether they have relatives in Russia, what their background is, what their real biography is. The check has to be conducted not only by the special services but by civil society too.”
Zelenskiy’s team is also reportedly looking for a new office to accommodate the presidential administration. The comedian-turned-president earlier said that he wanted to move his future office from its historic location on Bankova Street to “an open space office.”
For this reason, it is difficult not to draw parallels with the “Servant of the People” television series, which Kostyuk co-wrote. In the series, President Vasyl Holoborodko, played by Zelenskiy, moves the administration and the entire government quarter to a large expo center outside of central Kyiv.
Moreover, Zelenskiy is apparently considering doing live broadcasts from inside his administration. The comedic actor and television producer filmed regular video blogs from his campaign office during the election.
“He (Zelenskiy) is saying now: ‘I want cameras everywhere so that (people) could enter and watch online. I don’t want to sit on Bankova Street. I want to sit in a normal European transparent office,’” said Serhiy Shefir, Zelenskiy’s key business partner at Kvartal 95, who also participated in his campaign, in an interview with Ukrainian website The Babel published on May 2.
The move, however, may be unaffordable. Dmytro Shymkiv, the former deputy head of President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, estimated that the move could cost the state budget “tens of millions of dollars” and would require building a completely new structure. It would have to meet high security requirements, have large convention rooms, and be able to accommodate over 400 staffers and archives, Shymkiv said in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda on April 23.
“We won’t move at the expense of the state budget,” Shefir said. “We are inventive, but everyone stops us. We say that we’ll find an investor. They tell us it’s corruption. Everything is perceived negatively. They bring us down to earth. But, of course, a normal office is highly desirable. I was at Zelenskiy’s meeting with President Petro Poroshenko at the presidential administration last December. It’s very uncomfortable there.”
Zelenskiy adviser and former Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk also described his impression from visiting the presidential administration as “terribly uncomfortable.”
But the move from Bankova, Danylyuk said on April 25, would be more of a symbol of Zelenskiy’s presidency “breaking out of old realities, principles, and walls.”
