Intoxication with resignation

The scandal with the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine provoked another crisis in the Rada

The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, submitted his resignation yesterday. This happened after a scandal that occurred a week ago at Frankfurt am Main airport. According to the German newspaper Bild, on May 4, Yuriy Lutsenko and his 19-year-old son Alexander were removed from a Frankfurt am Main - Seoul flight in a state of severe alcohol intoxication. The plane commander called the police, after which the Ukrainians were detained and spent the night in a police station. According to the newspaper, which cited the police, during the conflict the detainees allowed themselves “crude curses, ill-mannered behavior and malicious insults” both towards the crew of the aircraft and then towards the police. Lutsenko and his son, in particular, threw mobile phones.

According to the minister himself, he only drank a glass of beer during lunch at the airport, after which he was not allowed on the plane “on suspicion of intoxication.” In his written statement, which was read out by Speaker Vladimir Lytvyn at yesterday's meeting of the Rada, Lutsenko said that the incident was settled after Ukrainian diplomats and the deputy chief of police of the federal state of Hesse, Gunter Hefner, arrived at the police station and made an official apology to the Ukrainian minister, and the scandal subsequently fanned by the yellow press.

However, yesterday information about the police chief’s apology was refuted by the speaker of the Hessian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Michael Buser, on the air of the Deutsche Welle radio station. According to the ministry speaker, there were no grounds for the apology. As Bucer explained, the vice-president of the land police arrived at Yuriy Lutsenko’s station solely to clarify the circumstances of the incident, “because this was required of Mr. Hefner by his official duties.”

In addition, on Monday another German publication, the Munich magazine Focus, published new details of the Ukrainian minister’s stormy night in Frankfurt. According to journalists, Lutsenko used offensive and racist expressions such as “Nazi pigs” in a fight with police. This, according to the publication, is stated in the report of the Frankfurt police to the German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. The Focus publication refutes the statement of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, which claims that “there was no drunken brawl.” According to the magazine, the report to the head of the German Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that “the minister and the persons who accompanied him were obviously in a state of complete intoxication.” The memo goes on to list "Nazi and racist imagery" and attacks.

Despite this, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in this story is inclined to consider himself rather a victim of political intrigues of “anti-Ukrainian forces inside Ukraine.” “I became a victim of a domestic situation that resulted in a political scandal, and I do not intend to continue it,” Lutsenko said yesterday at a press conference in Kyiv. According to the minister, it was the desire to end the scandal that forced him to resign. Lutsenko was supported in this desire by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. Yesterday, according to UNIAN, he said that the incident in Germany involving the Minister of Internal Affairs caused significant damage to the reputation of Ukraine and his resignation from this position is a logical step.

Nevertheless, the “domestic situation” with the Minister of Internal Affairs may once again provoke a political crisis in the Ukrainian parliament. The upcoming vote on Lutsenko's resignation has shaken the already fragile balance of political forces in the Rada, as a result of which yesterday's parliamentary meeting was blocked by deputies of the Party of Regions. The stumbling block was the question of how exactly to vote for Lutsenko’s resignation: having received evidence from the German side about the minister’s misbehavior or without waiting for data from Germany. The “Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc” and the Ukrainian communists refused to vote yesterday without evidence, after which the “regionals”, who had long dreamed of dismissing Lutsenko without any evidence, seized the podium and the presidium of parliament with the slogan “Yura - you're hungover!”

Now, if the work of the Verkhovna Rada does not begin within 30 days, to correct the situation, Ukraine will have to re-elect the parliament.

Nina GUGUSHVILI