Toughness is rewarded, so are loyalty and patience.
These are the messages that President Viktor Yanukovych sent the nation with the latest government reshuffle on Nov. 7.
Anatoliy Mohyliov was dismissed as Interior Minister and sent off to head Crimea in place of the late Vasyl Dzharty, whose seat has been vacant since Aug. 17. Mohyliov’s job was taken over by Vitaly Zakharchenko, who previously headed the Tax Administration.
His deputy, Oleksandr Klymenko, was moved up to replace him.
The trio has the following in common: They are loyal to the president or members of his family, have reputations for ruthlessness and are expected to do what the president wants.
The appointment of Molyliov, 56, was greeted with horror by many groups in Crimea. He once headed the peninsula’s police force between 2007 and 2010, gaining him plenty of enemies.
When he took over the Interior Ministry, critics pounced on him for increasing human rights abuses and brutality by officers.
Yevhen Zakharov, head of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group in Ukraine, noted that Mohyliov dismissed a department within the ministry that investigated human rights violations, introduced compulsory fingerprinting for everyone detained by police and radically increased the number of troops at rallies and demonstrations – all in the first couple of month as a minister.
It is under Mohyliov that stationary police units along highways were restored, a Soviet hangover abandoned by former President Viktor Yushchneko.
The macho cowboy style, however, is evidently what Yanukovych wants in governing one of the most divided regions. Loyalty to Russia is strong in Crimea.
He is disliked even in the police ranks. A famous video on Youtube shows a traffic police officer from Kharkiv swearing at the minister for issuing “decrees that are impossible to fulfill.”
Representatives of the Crimean Tatars, a native people of the peninsula, said his appointment is a bad idea.
“The period of his work in Crimea did not leave any positive memories, to put it mildly,” said Mustafa Dzhemilyov, head of the Crimean Tatars’ parliament.
He said Mohyliov is remembered for praising the Stalin-era deportations of the Crimean Tatars, as well as the shooting of unarmed people in 2007 by police under his command.
The macho cowboy style, however, is evidently what Yanukovych wants in governing one of the most divided regions. Loyalty to Russia is strong in Crimea.
Arriving to Crimea in a diamond-studded police general’s uniform, Mohyliov said on Nov. 9 that he would “search for compromises” with the Crimean Tatars and will work to bring investment into the region.
Mohyliov’s replacement in the Interior Ministry, 48-year-old Zakharchenko, has the reputation of “a man of the family,” one tax inspector told Kyiv Post, referring to his loyalty to Yanukovych’s family.
Zakharchenko is also from Yanukovych’s home turf in Donetsk Oblast, where he enjoyed a law enforcement career from 1984 and 2008.
He shifted to the Poltava Oblast tax administration before becoming the nation’s top tax collector at the end of last year.
On his watch, business complained of increasing and heavy-handed tax inspections.
Zakharchenko is expected to pay close attention to economic crimes in leading the nation’s 300,000 police officers.
“Our task is to make sure that every criminal who robs the state should pay the money back with big penalties on top,” Yanukovych said. “This is the task I set for the minister.”
He will also impose discipline. “The tightening of screws within the ministry will come first of all,” predicted political analyst Kost Bondarenko.
Zakharchenko’s replacement in the tax service, Oleksandr Klymenko, 31, is a dark horse. Also hailing from the president’s home turf in Donetsk Oblast, Klymenko is a financier by education.
He worked in business and then in the regional tax administration until February, when he moved to Kyiv to become the No. 2 person in the nation’s tax service.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]
