Page 70 - bne_April 2021_20210401

70 Opinion bne April 2021
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy seems to have launched an attack on Ukraine’s most powerful oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. But it's still not clear what is actually going on. KYIV BLOG:
Zelenskiy government launches a major de-oligarchisation drive, but is it for real?
Ben Aris in Berlin
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's spokesperson Iuliia Mendel posted a blog on the Atlantic Council’s
website claiming that Ukraine has launched a major de-oligarchisation campaign. But is the campaign for real,
as there are conflicting signals coming out of Kyiv, and Zelenskiy’s relations with the oligarchs remain far from clear?
“The rise of Ukraine’s oligarch class dates back to the early 1990s, when a select few were able to acquire enormous wealth during the privatisations that followed the collapse
of the USSR. This small group of billionaires then used their personal fortunes to build media empires and establish networks of influence extending deep into Ukraine’s political structures, judiciary and state organs. They have remained in this dominant position ever since,” Mendel said.
“Ukraine’s oligarchic system has proved highly resilient, outliving numerous governments and coming through the turbulence of two separate post-Soviet revolutions more or less intact. Each successive drive to change the system
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has resulted in innovative new ways to maintain the unfair advantages and artificial monopolies that form the foundation stones of the oligarchic economic system. The overwhelming might of the oligarchs has kept Ukraine trapped in an obsolete and dysfunctional past while preventing the country from reaching its true potential,” Mendel concluded.
As bne IntelliNews highlighted in a recent op-ed, “The Oligarch Problem” is probably the major issue facing not
only Ukraine, but all of the countries of the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Only this weekend it was reported that Georgian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili’s son had “ordered” security forces to question people that had criticised him
on social media, leading commentators to say the Georgian government has been completely captured by the Ivanishvili family. Russia has its own oligarch problem, but there, Russian President Vladimir Putin has pushed out the oligarchs that lorded it under former President Boris Yeltsin and replaced them with stoligarchs – state-sponsored oligarchs that are personally close to Putin.