Ukrainiana

Hurricane Yuliya Makes Landfall on Energy Mogul

In a heated talk show on Channel 1+1, Ukraine’s unemployed PM and re-employed Energy Minister pulled each other’s hair.

Armed with stacks of confidential papers, Yuliya Tymoshenko and Yuriy Boiko staged a revelations-packed duel that kept the audience guessing as to whose side carried more truth.

Since no polygraph tests were taken in the studio, the X-Files catchphrase “The truth is out there” might be useful in describing the combatants’ credentials.
Still, most would agree that, on the battlefield, Tymo scored more points.
Whether it was the allegations she made or the finesse with which she played the heartstrings of her fans, it was Boiko who got his balls busted.

Sure, he went over her past dealings with the now extinct EESU gas trading empire she owned, but that was hardly anything new. (The most popular adage holds that, as PM, she wrote off some UAH 8 bn worth of EESU debt.)
What was new? The Gas Princess proudly produced the minutes of a RosUkrEnergo AG meeting dating back to 2004, which linked Boiko,then CEO of Naftohaz to the management of that secretive company.

Few experts would reject out of hand the proposition that Tymo may have skeletons in her closet. It is equally certain that, taking the West as a yardstick — with the exception of Hungary and Israel — any allegations of this magnitude regarding officeholders should be followed by their immediate resignation. Nothing of the kind transpired in Ukraine.

And that’s the distance our home-grown Western integrators should keep in mind.