Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

When former President Leonid Kuchma recently said that “everything has zeroized” and his team is coming back under Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency, he was not exaggerating. The list of new cabinet members reads like a retread of the era that seemed gone half a decade ago.

Mykola Azarov is the new prime minister, Oleksandr Lavrynovych is justice minister, Dmytro Tabachnyk is education minister, Anatoliy Tolstoukhov is the cabinet minister and so the list goes on. Few newly appointed cabinet members will take their new jobs for the first time. Good luck trying to find the “reformer” in this bunch.

The new government has more billionaires and multimillionaires that any other. Multimillionaires Sergiy Tigipko, Valery Khoroshkovsky, Borys Kolesnikov, Andriy Klyuev and others received posts in the government.

Commenting on Khoroshkovsky’s appointment as the State Security Service Chief, Azarov said it is no crime to be rich while noting that the new SBU head will have to separate his businesses from his state job.

Economy Minister Vasyl Tsushko was recently under criminal investigation by the general prosecutor for an attempted takeover of the prosecutor’s office in 2007. The charges were dropped on March 9.

The scandalous Nestor Shufrych was again appointed minister for emergency situations. Infamous for his sharp tongue and inclination for fisticuffs, he’s at the center of many jokes for causing more emergencies than he solves.

This motley crew has provoked contrasting reactions. One analyst called it “a kamikaze government,” saying it will attempt massive economic reform and burn doing it. Bloggers in western Ukraine started talking about Ukraine becoming a federation of semi-autonomous oblasts.

The new government is coming in at a time when the economy shows signs of coming out of the deep recession of 2009, when the country’s gross domestic product dropped by 15 percent. It’s lucky for the new cabinet members who will get credit for the economic recovery, but bad for the nation, which is not likely to see any long-overdue structural changes in government or the economy for awhile.