Two governors will be fired due to a lack of results, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Dec. 24 during a meeting of the Communities and Territories Development Council, an advisory body to the president.
The two are Markiyan Malsky, governor of Lviv Oblast, and Ihor Bondarenko, governor of Zakarpattia Oblast. Appointed in early July, Malsky and Bondarenko were the first governors appointed by Zelensky.
“I want to thank the two oblast heads,” said Zelensky. “I decided to fire them, not because they are inexperienced or corrupt, but because we haven’t seen any results in these two oblasts.”
Before assuming his post, Malsky was a lawyer who worked in several law firms, including Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Paris. In 2016, he was appointed an Honorary Consul of Austria in Lviv. Malsky was a board member of Ukraine’s Arbitration Association and the regional department of the European Business Association.
A month before being appointed governor, Malsky gave an interview to the Kyiv Post in which he said he wasn’t planning to enter politics.
Malsky was allegedly picked for the governor’s post by a Facebook poll. On June 14, Zelensky asked his Facebook followers to vote for three candidates for the governor of Lviv Oblast. Malsky won in a landslide.
Bondarenko is a well-known local businessman who owns a chocolate factory named after himself. He also has a chain of coffeehouses in Uzhhorod, the capital of Zakarpattia Oblast, which is located some 750 kilometers west of Kyiv.
Malsky didn’t comment on Zelensky’s words, while Zakarpattia Oblast’s administration issued a statement saying that they found out about the firing of its head from the news.
The decree to fire the two governors hasn’t yet been published on the president’s website.
While Zelensky holds powers to appoint and fire governors, on Dec. 13 the president introduced a bill meant to also give him the right to suspend the elected mayors and village heads. The bill seeks to change the Constitution and requires 300 votes to pass. The president’s Servant of the People party holds 249 seats in the 423-member parliament.
