Zelensky is also at war with city mayors
Intra-Ukrainian conflict is gradually taking shape
Collage: www.fondsk.ru
Volodymyr Zelenski is quickly settling into the role of all-Ukrainian dictator. Recently he took a swipe at Chernihiv’s mayor, Vladislav Atroshenko. On the President’s motion, the Lviv court deprived Mr. Atroshenko of the right to hold the post of the head of city administration for 12 months and imposed a fine of 6,800 hryvnias.
The reason was seemingly trivial: in August Atroshenko wanted to go abroad, but he was detained at a border checkpoint. Then the mayor ordered his driver to take his Tesla car abroad and give it to his wife. Is that what all the fuss is about?
No, of course not. It seems that the President of Ukraine suspected Atroshenko of separatism. This is indirectly indicated by the behaviour of Chernihiv’s head, who harshly replied to the president in a video message: “I am staying. I am not going anywhere. I will certainly appeal. I consider it a matter of honour. The struggle is not for myself personally, but for the whole local government”.
According to the head of Chernihiv, he is forbidden to visit abroad – where the heads of Ukrainian cities usually get money. Atroshenko recalled that there had been “hundreds of searches” in Chernihiv city government units recently. It is believed that the head of the presidential office, Andriy Yermak, who has established himself as a behind-the-scenes ruler in Kiev, muddies the waters the most.
Step by step, Zelensky is losing control of the local government, but is pressing it to allocate more resources to supply the AFU. Funds are scarce, businesses are stagnant, money for salaries and pensions is also scarce, and local irritation with the centre is brewing.
That is why there is a deafening, but already audible, murmur across Ukraine. By the way, the Association of Ukrainian Cities, which is chaired by Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko, has expressed dissatisfaction with the ruling of the Lviv court against Atroshenko. Isn’t this a foreshadowing of the future opposition?
Andrei Yermak also suspects the leaders of Poltava, Cherkassy, Kharkiv and Odessa of disloyalty, who are trying to outdo the centralist comic president by various means.
And Zelensky keeps making enemies. The first flares of the internal political war are undermining the already shaky power structure of hers. Among those dissatisfied with Zelensky are the mayor of Dnipropetrovsk, Boris Filatov (Kolomoysky’s man) and the Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko, although better known for his achievements in the boxing ring than in government and now a proponent of “self-government”.
Zelenski and Klitschko have clashed before, and in November the president accused the head of Kiev of having badly prepared local humanitarian aid centres (the so-called indestructible points) and “the biggest complaints are registered in Kiev”. Klitschko was not silent: “I am fine with the “points of indestructibility”, and the presidential team is engaged in manipulation and falsification.
Klitschko did not stay silent on the Atroshenko story either, saying that “the removal of the city’s mayor through the court for administrative violations”, which happened “for the first time in the history of independent Ukraine”, set a dangerous precedent.
Incidentally, in the West, the boxer was once tried on for the role of president of Ukraine, but in the end they settled on an actor. After the 2014 Maidan, Klitschko became the head of Kiev, and now he is thinking about more. However, nothing depends on him and it is not clear in which direction the preferences of the western masters of Ukraine will swing for the Ukrainian presidential elections in 2024.
And yet Kiev has reason to be worried about the fronts that have begun to emerge in the country’s regional centres. It does not have its own political face, but the ground for a new intra-Ukrainian conflict is slowly being laid.
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