In a big interview with the Focus weekly published on Dec. 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke of the country’s urgent need for the COVID-19 vaccine, phone calls with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and corruption allegations against his close aide.
With the end of the year approaching, Zelensky spoke with two media outlets, the American newspaper New York Times and the Ukrainian news magazine Focus.
Read more: In interview with New York Times, Zelensky talks oligarchs, Russia and US
The hour-long interview with Focus offered a few insights into Zelensky’s take on the biggest challenges of his presidency.
Health care collapse
When the coronavirus pandemic reached Ukraine in March, the government went through three health ministers in one month, provoking criticism.
Zoryana Skaletska was fired from the health minister’s post on March 4 after six months in office. Her successor Illya Yemets was dismissed after just three weeks.
Then Maksym Stepanov stepped in on March 20 and has retained at his post ever since, despite critics accusing him of inaction.
In his Focus interview, Zelensky addressed criticism of Stepanov and the turmoil at the ministry in the beginning of the year. In doing so, he compared the government’s work both to the business world and a war.
“It is easy in business: You are assigned a task and if you do not do the job, you must go and another person will be hired instead of you,” Zelensky said, before switching to another metaphor.
“Coronavirus is a war. At war, the officer is leading soldiers to attack. If he does not do this and a soldier runs into the battle first, then we need to change the officer. If the commander is killed, then someone must take his place.”
“Same here. I believe that coronavirus psychologically killed the (former health) ministers. They were unable to quickly do their job. Not because they are bad, but because they were ministers in difficult times.”
Speaking of current Health Minister Stepanov, Zelensky said: “He is the toughest minister of all we’ve had.”
COVID-19 vaccine in January?
Zelensky told Focus that he set a task for Stepanov: He must bring a vaccine against coronavirus to Ukraine by the end of winter.
“I want us to receive 100,000-200,000 doses in January,” Zelensky said.
This is an ambitious task given that all countries want to get the vaccine as fast as possible, and capacities to produce it are limited.
Ukraine’s health authorities have already signed contracts with producers to supply coronavirus vaccines for just 2 million people, which is 5% of the country’s population, according to Bloomberg.
Ukraine’s Health Ministry also expects to receive the vaccine for 4 million people from COVAX, an international project for vaccine development, for free.
Hr 2.6 billion ($91 million) are allocated for planned vaccination against COVID-19 in the 2021 budget of the Health Ministry.
Still, these funds will not be enough to cover the 43 million of Ukraine’s population.
“The public must understand that we cannot provide a vaccine for 10 million people in one day. Not because our people do not want to get vaccinated, but because all the countries are fighting to get it,” Zelensky said.
“This will be the biggest challenge for Health Minister Stepanov, I believe. We are not on the list of high-priority countries that will receive the vaccine soon.”
“Now we will see what a minister he is. If our country is not on the list of those who will get the vaccine by default, he must do everything to get us on the list,” he said.
A lawmaker with Zelensky’s political party Servant of the People, Mykhailo Radutsky said that the government came up with an idea to use the Antonov An-225 Mriya — the world’s heaviest and largest cargo aircraft — to speed up the process of getting the vaccine.
In an interview with the Ukraina24 TV channel, Radutsky said that the authorities would offer a barter to vaccine producers: Ukraine will be responsible for transportation of the vaccine and, in turn, will get on the fast track to receive the vaccine.
Ukraine is among 67 low and lower-middle income countries at risk of being left behind as rich countries move toward booking the vaccine first, according to a study by the People’s Vaccine Alliance released on Dec. 9.
The alliance of non-profit organizations including Amnesty International concluded that rich nations representing just 14% of the world’s population have bought up 53% of all the most promising vaccines so far.
Speaking of getting a vaccine for himself, Zelensky said he would not use a free one and would pay for it when it becomes available in Ukraine commercially.
“We will not block the commercial distribution of the (COVID-19) vaccine in Ukraine,” he said.
Chat with Putin
When asked whether he wants to talk with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky said: “I can call him and he will certainly talk to me.”
Zelensky has not done this recently because there is no topic for discussion as of now, he explained.
“As Ukraine’s president, I must resolve all difficult issues with him. And if this helps stop the war sooner, I ought to talk to him. Apart from that, I believe that there should be both a dialogue in the Normandy Format as well as a direct dialogue,” he said.
“There are issues that we do not raise in the Normandy Format. The issue of political prisoners detained in Russia or Crimea and the issue of (the de-occupation of) Crimea. That format is only on the Donbas.”
“Hence we have to talk to him on a wider range of topics tet-a-tet.”
Corruption
Assessing the authorities’ efforts to fight corruption in the country, Zelensky said: “There’s still something to fight.”
“I am not corrupt, I do not take anything. Everyone knows this and, thus, no one brings anything to me. Everyone acknowledges, including British and American intelligence, that the top establishment of our country does not take bribes.”
However, the interview revealed that Zelensky apparently tolerates the corrupt past of his administration’s top employees — as long as they don’t take bribes while working for him.
The employee in question is Oleh Tatarov, a deputy head of Zelensky’s office.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) suspects Tatarov of bribing a police expert to fake an expert evaluation, which allegedly helped an embezzlement scheme run by a development company associated with Tatarov.
The alleged bribery took place in 2017, three years before Zelensky appointed Tatarov as deputy head of the President’s Office responsible for law enforcement.
Tatarov denies the allegations. However, on Dec. 21, Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak, claimed that Tatarov had asked the President’s Office to suspend him.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center accused the President’s Office of lying, since no official documents on Tatarov’s suspension have been published. Later, the Censor.net news site reported that Tatarov kept going to work and had not been suspended. Tatarov confirmed this information on Dec. 24, saying that he keeps working.
When Focus asked Zelensky whether he believes that Tatarov is corrupt, Zelensky said: “I cannot even make such conclusions! The case is of 2017. I was not president back then and he did not work in the President’s Office.”
“So the accusations like ‘in the times of Zelensky, corruption continues’ are unfair. It hurts, it affects me personally.”
“Starting from this week, we removed Tatarov from the NABU and prosecutor’s office cases. All these powers were transferred to (Deputy Head of the President’s Office) Andriy Smyrnov.”
Recently Tatarov publicly attacked NABU’s chief Artem Sytnyk, contradicting the administration’s official position of supporting NABU.
“This is a conflict of interest. That’s why we told Tatarov to go and prove that he was not guilty of anything,” Zelensky said.
But the case against Tatarov was undermined when on Dec. 24, the Prosecutor General’s Office took the case from NABU and transferred it to the State Security Service, a secretive agency run by Zelensky’s personal friend Ivan Bakanov.
The High Anti-Corruption Court is scheduled to consider arresting Tatarov and setting bail for him on Dec. 28. Tatarov said in a statement that “there can’t be and will be no arrest” of him.
The brazen comment contradicted the position of “equal rules for all” that Zelensky tried to convey in the Focus interview.
“I want to emphasize: If those who work with me are suspected of corruption, these people will be fired,” Zelensky told Focus. “And I have not yet seen such cases in my office for a year and a half. No one stole anything from the army or sold bulletproof vests with holes or received bribes,” he added, hinting at accusations of corruption in defense procurement made against allies of his predecessor Petro Poroshenko.
