Week’s milestones. Cabinet in anticipation, Black Sea splash, and numerous guests - invited and uninvited

The government does not expect any mercy from the deputies but relies on political expediency. Odesa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili was selective in his fight against corruption. Joe Biden, unlike Dmytro Firtash, has come to Kyiv.

The Cabinet of Ministers is almost ready to report on its accomplishments and admit some failures over a year of its work. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk will be traditional headliner, assuming his post. Yatsenyuk should be inspired not only with the visit of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, but also by his own trip to Brussels for the meeting of the Ukraine-EU Association Council. The prime minister has already reported to his fellow citizens about the successful budget execution, calculation of subsidies and financial support for the Armed Forces. It doesn’t really matter whether the regular Ukrainians believe him or not, as it’s the MPs who are to consider the issue of the Cabinet’s dismissal. Anyway, the battle for the offices in the future government has already begun in the sidelines of Rada’s plenary meetings..

Mikheil Saakashvili underlined hi serious intentions to change his Odesa governor post to a higher (read - the prime minister's) one. There is really no other explanation to Saakashvili’s Sunday speech when he presented a list of Ukraine’s top ranking corrupt officials, responsible for a minimum of $5 billion shortage in the state budget. For obvious reasons, Yatsenyuk is on that list, but there were no major businessmen, able to find common language with the Head of State. I wonder if Biden heard Saakashvili’s angry diatribes on his route to Kyiv.

Saakashvili showed serious intentions to change his Odesa governor post to a higher one / Photo from UNIAN

Meanwhile, the Minister of Information Policy Yuriy Stets confirmed on Facebook his long announced intention to retire. Apparently, Ukraine’s information chief decided that he had done everything to win in this area of ​​confrontation with Russia. It’s a shame though that his finalizing ministerial report is hardly worth reading. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov rushed to fill the void in Ukraine’s information strategy. The minister set up a large-scale PR show involving special forces around the potential arrival in Ukraine of the Ukraiian tycoon, Dmytro Firtash. But the “Viennese captive" preferred to stay on the banks of the Danube, of which he had informed the public in advance. It seems that Stets won’t be the only minister to leave office.

The developments around the so-called energy blockade of the Russian-annexed Crimea are getting more and more interesting. Vladimir Putin paid a personal visit to Crimea, announcing the launch of an “energy bridge” to mainland Russia in order to meet the electricity needs of the peninsula. The voyage was rather of a propagandistic nature, as the situation has not improved fundamentally. However, the Kremlin showed the Crimeans that "Putin sees, Putin knows, Putin cares." On the other hand, the Ukrainian government has shown willingness to partially restore power supplies to Crimea, but it’s just the enterprise owned by Firtash that will receive electricity after the complete halt. Obviously, these are not the last moves in the Crimean energy puzzle.

Yevgeny Magda

UNIAN in Google News