The team of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the apparent winner of the presidential election in Ukraine, has dismissed accusations of his role in a number of high-profile events of the recent past, such as court rulings on the illegitimacy of PrivatBank’s nationalization and decriminalization of illegal enrichment.
“This is a unique example of the authorities’ putting the blame not on their predecessors but on their successors who have not yet even started performing their duties,” Dmytro Razumkov, a spokesperson and political consultant for Zelenskiy’s campaign staff, wrote on Facebook.
Razumkov wondered what Zelenskiy had to do with the court ruling finding PrivatBank’s nationalization as unlawful.
“The judiciary ‘reformed’ by the president [Petro Poroshenko] rules that the bank’s nationalization was unlawful. There are four possible explanations for this. Either some of the ‘judiciary supervisors from the presidential office’ reached such an agreement with [Ukrainian tycoon and former PrivatBank owner Ihor] Kolomoiskiy, or this was a way to do dirt to the new president, or nobody was able to completely reform the system and it remained the same, or the nationalization was really carried out in violation of the procedures. The question is what does Zelenskiy have to do with it?” Razumkov said.
He called for combating corruption, cronyism, and looting in the armed forces.
Razumkov also described the decriminalization of illegal enrichment as “revanchism.”
“Petro Oleksiyovych [Poroshenko] anticipates that a court would invalidate electronic declarations, and this would lead to the loss of visa-free travel,” Razumkov said.
“The question is who delegated these judges to the Constitutional Court? Was it not the so far legitimate guarantor of the constitution? Was it not the Rada, which Poroshenko has been capable of completely influencing until lately? The president’s quota is six judges and the Rada’s quota is another six judges, and so it’s so far their responsibility rather than that of the new leadership. And what’s more: Who is politically responsible for the fact that these same judges have multiplied the legislation on illegal enrichment by a factor of zero? This is what the Poroshenko team’s real revanchism is all about,” Razumkov said.
