Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has been the right hand man for two Ukrainian presidents, Leonid Kuchma and incumbent Viktor Yanukovych.
Yet, despite his enormous responsibilities to the nation of 46 million people, he doesn’t give many interviews or feel the need to explain his behavior to the public except in scripted comments.
His recent remarks expose the real Azarov, an anti-democratic Soviet holdover unsuited for the job of leading the nation to modernity, democracy and economic revival through free markets.
Two cases in point:
First: When a young journalist from Korrespondent magazine requested an interview, the prime minister’s spokesman fired back with this SMS, which the journalist released on Sept. 20: “We will require final approval on everything to do with the interview, from the headline to the photograph cutline.”
We understand that [Prime Minister Mykola} Azarov has a lot to hide and has many reasons to avoid discussions with journalists.
Second: During a Sept. 21 meeting with the youth wing of his ruling Party of Regions in Kyiv, Azarov announced that he was banning TV comedies that make fun of politicians. "This is my initiative. Such [comedies] are not filmed and will not be filmed," Azarov was quoted as saying.
We understand that Azarov has a lot to hide and has many reasons to avoid discussions with journalists.
As State Tax Administration chief under Kuchma, the tyrannical president who ruled from 1994 to 2005, Azarov was allegedly caught on recordings discussing a wide array of criminal activities – from the rigging of Kuchma’s 1999 presidential re-election, to the rewriting of Naftogaz Ukraine’s tax returns, to how to trump-up a conviction against Sloviansky Bank deputy president Borys Feldman.
Azarov has always denied the charges, as have all other officials implicated in wrongdoing on the hundreds of hours of recordings made by ex-Kuchma bodyguard Mykola Melnychenko in 1999 and 2000.
Azarov, like Kuchma, has claimed the recordings were fabrications or doctored to make the administration look bad.
However, we think otherwise.
The Azarov-related recordings cover hours of conversations over several months and many of the discussions on the recordings mirror events as they happened.
This explains why Kuchma and Azarov, to this day, avoid journalists they can’t control. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad for the nation.
