In early June, Ukrainska Pravda news outlet accompanied President Volodymyr Zelensky on his visit to Khmelnytsky Oblast. On June 11, the news outlet published a two-part interview with the Ukrainian leader.
In the interview, Zelensky said that notorious Interior Minister Arsen Avakov was the only man for the job when the Cabinet was formed. According to the president, the case of Pavel Sheremet, a prominent Belarus journalist killed in downtown Kyiv in 2016, is now the minister’s personal responsibility and he must close the case before he leaves office.
Three people were arrested in December on allegations of murdering Sheremet. Yet, six months in, no charges have officially been issued. Two people remain behind bars.
Zelensky also stated that he doesn’t trust former President Petro Poroshenko, who now leads the 27-member European Solidarity faction in parliament. On June 10, Poroshenko was charged with abuse of office, which has a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Poroshenko “is an experienced manipulator,” said Zelensky. The interview took place on June 3, a week before Poroshenko was offically charged.
The president also talked about his relations with businesspeople and oligarchs, acknowledged that his ruling Servant of the People party includes charlatans and people loyal to billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and said that the former Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk was more interested in Facebook likes than reforming the country.
The Kyiv Post provides a summary of Zelensky’s interview.
On Avakov
Arsen Avakov is the most widely discussed person in Ukraine right now.
The minister, who has been occupying his post since February 2014, has been accused of corruption, stalling reforms and failing to investigate attacks on journalists and activists.
Read More: Is Arsen Avakov invincible?
Other recent scandals have also raised questions about Avakov’s leadership. In May, police in the small town of Kaharlyk in Kyiv Oblast allegedly raped and tortured a woman and assaulted a man. That same month, over 20 people took part in a gunfight over private bus routes in the town of Brovary in the greater Kyiv metropolitan area, resulting in charges of hooliganism. Both cases unscored the fact that lawlessness persists in the police.
“The minister himself should be responsible for such things,” Zelensky said during the interview. But he said he didn’t ask Avakov to resign.
However, Zelensky did explain why Avakov was reappointed minister twice under his presidency, despite the fact that Zelensky’s 248-member Servant of the People faction in parliament can easily remove any minister with 226 votes.
Back in 2019, “I thought — and everyone around me said — that, indeed, today there is no interior minister as capable as Avakov,” Zelensky said.
Now, Avakov must finish the investigation of Sheremet’s murder, he said.
“Sheremet is his personal responsibility. And I told him I wanted to see how it would end,” the president added.
“I don’t want the story with Sheremet to be like the story with (Georgiy) Gongadze,” Zelensky said.
A prominent Ukrainian journalist, Gongadze was killed in 2000. His murderer is serving a 13-year prison sentence but the organizers were never found. Ukrainian media outlets alleged that former President Leonid Kuchma was behind the murder, but he was never charged. Kuchma has denied the accusations.
On Poroshenko
Zelensky also talked at length about Poroshenko, who has been the most vocal source of opposition to the president in parliament and has also faced a number of criminal allegations.
“From the very beginning of my presidency, Poroshenko wanted to meet with me. I didn’t see any point in that,” said Zelensky, “because I think that everything that Poroshenko said before is a lie.”
“I don’t trust him,” he added.
Zelensky pointed to the 2019 presidential elections, when several anonymous Facebook channels pushed disinformation and so-called “black PR” against Zelensky.
Read more: Disinformation, ‘black PR’ emerge before April 21 runoff election
Zelensky said that, after he became president, Poroshenko began demonizing him in talks with foreign leaders. “Every time I met with foreign leaders, they initially perceived me as… an enemy of Ukraine,” said the president.
According to Zelensky, he met with Poroshenko face-to-face to talk about politics, yet they didn’t reach an agreement.
On recent Cabinet changes
During the interview, Zelensky explained the reasoning behind the rapid March 4 government changes, during which a new prime minister was appointed and only six ministers were able to keep their jobs.
Zelensky said that he met with Honcharuk prior to the presidential elections and was eager to give him a shot.
“I trusted him very much,” said Zelensky. “Almost all the ministers who were in the previous government were nominated by (Honcharuk).”
Soon, an audio tape leaked in which Honcharuk said that the president doesn’t understand the economy and it needs to be explained to him in simpler terms.
“Of course, the situation was unpleasant,” said Zelensky, “It was unpleasant for me personally because I thought that we were a team.”
“Public confidence in the prime minister was undermined, and lawmakers had a million questions for him,” said Zelensky, “So I told him honestly, I don’t think you can be the prime minister — not because of the recording, but because of what is happening.”
“I believe that (Honcharuk) did not become one team with the people, with lawmakers, with all of the ministers,” said the president.
On March 4, Denys Shmyhal, then the minister of regional development, was appointed prime minister, replacing Honcharuk. He had previously also served as the governor of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.
“When we were looking for the prime minister, we asked: Where can we get a prime minister? From current ministers, from current governors or from business,” said Zelensky.
“We saw he was a real candidate,” said Zelensky. The president added that he is currently satisfied with Shmyhal’s work.
Zelensky said that he asked business tycoon Valery Khoroshkovsky to head the State Customs Service. He led the Security Service of Ukraine under ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and the State Customs Service under pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko.
According to Zelensky, Khoroshkovsky declined the invitation.
“I think he was waiting (for an invitation) for the prime minister job, but I did not offer him that position,” said Zelensky.
On Kolomoisky
Zelensky has long been accused of having ties with Kolomoisky. Before his presidency, shows produced by Zelensky aired exclusively on Kolomoisky’s 1+1 television channel. Zelensky also relied on the channel for promotion during his presidential campaign.
After the 2019 parliamentary elections, Zelensky’s party featured a number of people linked to the oligarch.
Read More: Party crashers: Internal divides crack Zelensky’s ruling party in parliament
Zelensky doesn’t believe that Kolomoisky controls a group of lawmakers in his party despite evidence to the contrary, yet he admitted that there are lawmakers who support the oligarch.
“There are lawmakers who have good relations with (Kolomoisky),” said Zelensky.
“I know these people,” continued Zelensky. “(Lawmaker Oleksandr) Dubinsky is from the 1+1 channel and (he and Kolomoisky) have a long-standing relationship, and that’s understandable.”
“Yet, there are things, I think, that they do that are very wrong,” Zelensky added.
Dubinsky, who represents Zelensky’s party in parliament, was among the Kolomoisky-aligned lawmakers who submitted over 16,000 amendments to block a critical bank law from passing. Required for a new aid package from the International Monetary Fund, the law would have prevented Kolomoisky from regaining control over PrivatBank, which was nationalized in 2016.
Dubinsky proposed over 1,000 amendments. The law was eventually passed with the help of the opposition and after parliament changed bylaws concerning amendments to speed up the process.
Zelensky said that he sometimes talks with Kolomoisky. “He can write me a text message: ‘Pay attention to the energy situation in the country’ or ‘Something needs to be done with (energy) tariffs,” said Zelensky.
“That’s who he is,” said the president, adding that Kolomoisky doesn’t agree with him on a lot of things.
Kolomoisky is currently a defendant in cases in Ukraine, Switzerland, the U.K., Cyprus, Israel and the U.S. The oligarch stands accused of siphoning $5.5 billion from PrivatBank.
Kolomoisky denies the accusations and is counter-suing in Ukraine, accusing the state of raiding his property.
On people he trusts
From the start of his presidency, Zelensky faced accusations of appointing friends to government posts.
His childhood friend Ivan Bakanov became the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, while a total of 30 people personally acquainted with Zelensky received government jobs after the president took office.
“I trust my closest people – Andriy Yermak, Serhiy Shefir, Yuriy Kostyuk, Kyryl (Tymoshenko),” said the president. “Although Kyryl and I did not know each other before the presidential campaign.”
Yermak is Zelensky’s chief of staff and formerly worked as a copyright lawyer for Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 production studio. Shefir is Zelensky’s aide and formerly the producer and co-owner of Kvartal 95.
Kostyuk is Zelensky’s former screenwriter who now works in the president’s office. Tymoshenko also works in the president’s office.
In March, Geo Leros, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, published videos that appeared to show Yermak’s brother considering candidates for government jobs and discussing receiving money from some of them.
Leros accused both brothers of corruption and filed a complaint. The Yermak brothers denied the accusations and sued Leros.
Zelensky stood by his chief of staff.
“He definitely didn’t take anything. He did not take the money,” Zelensky said during his interview. “I can’t imagine what Yermak would have done to himself if his brother took something somewhere.”
As for the video recordings, Zelensky said that Yermak’s brother just likes to talk a lot, and that no corruption took place.
On Leros, who represents Zelensky’s party in parliament, the president was tougher in his wording: “I think he is a swindler.”
In addition to being a lawmaker, Leros served as Zelensky’s advisor on culture and art. After Leros published the audio tapes, he was fired.
It was the first scandal involving Yermak.
Before being appointed as Zelensky’s chief of staff, he was said to be in conflict with his predecessor, Andriy Bohdan, a lawyer previously employed by Kolomoisky.
On Andriy Bohdan
“We had a rift inside the team, and we could not work with (Bohdan),” Zelensky said. “I believe that, from the very beginning, I made the wrong decision, (appointing) him as the head of the president’s office.”
“From the very beginning, I wanted him to become a powerful prosecutor general,” he added.
Zelensky said that the vast powers that Bohdan received have spoiled him.
After the interview was published, Bohdan responded to Zelensky in a Facebook post.
“I am grateful to you for firing me, because my name won’t be associated with the chaos that you are throwing the country into,” wrote Bohdan.
He also wrote that “decent people” don’t comment publicly on the people they worked with, and threw in a menacing hint.
“I know very sensitive information about you and the country. But believe me, I’ll remain a decent person,” said the ex-official who was recently spotted playfully hitting a goat in the Kyiv Zoo.
