Vitaly Portnikov. New minister

The new minister is a well-forgotten old one
Vitaly Portnikov

Date of publication: October 2, 2000

I learned about the resignation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Boris Tarasyuk on board an Aerosvit airline plane heading from Moscow to Kyiv. Ukrainian, and after them Russian media, will report in a few hours about the unexpected resignation of the head of the foreign policy department. But the official who told me about the news, a supporter of improving Russian-Ukrainian relations, was not at all surprised. Rumors about the resignation of Boris Tarasyuk accompanied the minister almost the entire period of his tenure. In the system of foreign policy “checks and balances” built by Leonid Kuchma, Tarasyuk, a professional diplomat who, before his appointment as head of the Foreign Ministry, worked as Ukraine’s representative to NATO, symbolized Kyiv’s pro-Western orientation. However, after the death of the Deputy Secretary of the National Defense and Security Council (NSDC), Alexander Razumkov, who worked very fruitfully in the Moscow direction, and the resignation of the NSDC Secretary, Vladimir Gorbulin, who was responsible for relations with the West, the system of “checks and balances” turned out to be a historical construct. The change of power in Moscow deprived Leonid Kuchma of his most important tool - personal contacts with Boris Yeltsin. The new Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, General Yevgeny Marchuk, has taken up the task of establishing relations with Russia, having unprecedented opportunities for dialogue with Vladimir Putin’s entourage - after all, in this entourage there are many former colleagues of the politician who worked for many years in the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR. However, it is unlikely that the personal successes of Marchuk, who has long been an opponent of Leonid Kuchma and sharply criticized the head of state during last year’s presidential elections, can please the inner circle of the Ukrainian president. At the same time, in the “western direction” the main figure was Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, who enjoys unprecedented support from the governments of Western countries. And if previously the Minister of Foreign Affairs was considered a symbol of the “Western vector,” now the whole government acts as such a symbol. In this situation, the President of Ukraine could well sacrifice a figure in favor of supporters of the eastern vector.

The formal reason for Tarasyuk’s resignation was, apparently, a scandal that became public knowledge thanks to a publication in the popular newspaper “Facts and Comments” just on the day the minister left. The ambassadors of the United States and Canada, together with the heads of the Ukrainian representative offices of the International and European Banks for Reconstruction and Development, wrote to President Kuchma in which they expressed concern over the “decision not to continue moving along the path of reforming interbudgetary relations, which are discussed in the draft budget for 2001, submitted To you last week.

This decision, coupled with other measures taken over the past few weeks, gives the impression of a retreat from the reform program adopted by the government and ratified by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

We respectfully advise you to consider this issue and continue to support budget reform in general and reform of intergovernmental fiscal relations in particular . "

An angry Kuchma sent a letter to Prime Minister Yushchenko. In this letter, the president noted that the draft budget for the next year had not been received by his administration at all, no decisions had been made on this matter, as well as decisions that were a deviation from the reform program. The Prime Minister instructed the Minister of Foreign Affairs to respond. The Foreign Ministry expressed displeasure with interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine. This was the last note of Boris Tarasyuk.

However, the very next day, the announcement of the appointment of a new minister demonstrated that it was more about a change of figure than a course correction. Kuchma returned Anatoly Zlenko, the first foreign minister of independent Ukraine, to the Foreign Ministry. Zlenko, head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, retained his post after the election of Leonid Kravchuk as President of Ukraine. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR was a small department, rather a department of the Union Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Anatoly Zlenko had to build a diplomatic service literally from scratch, create a team of professionals. The same Boris Tarasyuk began his career as an assistant to Zlenko, then became his deputy... After Leonid Kuchma won the presidential elections in 1994, Zlenko was dismissed by the new president precisely because his name was associated not only with the previous head of state, but also with an orientation towards the West - and Kuchma promised his naive electorate an orientation towards the East... Kuchma then appointed the Ukrainian ambassador to Poland Gennady Udovenko - one of the few diplomats who supported him during the election campaign - as the new minister. However, almost immediately it became clear that the elderly minister could neither effectively continue the construction of the foreign policy department nor become one of his own in Moscow. Calls for Udovenko’s resignation have become as common as later calls for Tarasyuk’s resignation. Zlenko’s career, meanwhile, continued: the former minister, who headed the Ukrainian mission to the UN and then the embassy in Paris, only strengthened his contacts with Western colleagues.

It is Anatoly Zlenko who can be called the person thanks to whom the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine became, first of all, the department of professional executors of presidential foreign policy. His successors - with varying degrees of effectiveness - only continued this line of the first minister. Returning to the building at the St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, the “new old” minister, of course, will not abandon this line. But it will be much more difficult to criticize Zlenko. Young Boris Tarasyuk was a new person in the Ukrainian nomenklatura. Anatoly Zlenko is one of its veterans: he knows everyone and everyone knows him. Deputy ministers, politicians dreaming of diplomacy - all these categories of applicants for the post of head of the foreign policy department will now have to be much more careful. And in the West, although they may regret the resignation of the minister with whom Madeleine Albright was on friendly terms, they will at least be satisfied that his successor, well known in Washington, will not become on friendly terms with Igor Ivanov.

The age difference won't allow it.