MOSCOW, August 6. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Poroshenko regime has failed to launch an effective crusade against oligarchs to this day, the more so since the president is one of them, and it is very unlikely the big business tycoons will ever manage to plot a coup, let alone nation-wide protests, analysts believe.
Ukraine’s big business people are tired of the current authorities, a member of parliament from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, Sergey Leshchenko said in his blog. According to the legislator, Kiev on August 1 saw an informal get-together of former and current oligarchs and other big business figureheads. Reportedly they were discussing ways of resisting the authorities. "In attendance were: Rinat Akhmetov, Sergey Taruta, Viktor Pinchuk, Vasily Khmelnitsky, and Yuri Kosyuk," he said. The partakers agreed that "something in the country is going wrong" and made an attempt to plan a concerted response.
Some western media of authority have agreed that the struggle against the oligarchic regime in Ukraine has ended in failure. Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine has published an article entitle Poroshenko’s Doubtful Connections. In particular, the article says that Poroshenko has failed to keep his promise to sell up his business and strip big business tycoons of power. The Guardian in an article titled Oligarchs Nouveaux? Why Some Say Ukraine is Still in Thrall to an Elite says that government supporters, western diplomats and opposition figures tend to reply to inquiries about how the process of "de-oligarchisation" is proceeding in the country with exactly the same response: hearty laughter.
- Ukrainian tycoon Igor Kolomoisky has new political project in mind, expert says
- Top managers of tycoon Rinat Akhmetov’s firms questioned by Ukraine’s Security Service
- Dismissal of Dnipropetrovsk region governor part of battle of oligarchs, say experts
- Ukraine-style privatization: hypermarket with separate entrance 'For Foreigners Only'
- Saakashvili accuses Ukrainian tycoon of illegal trafficking in Odessa
- Shadow economy accounts for nearly 70% of Ukraine’s economy
- Ukrainian oligarch Firtash says satisfied with Vienna court verdict
The director of Eurasian Studies Centre, Vladimir Kornilov, is quoted by the Svobodnaya Pressa (Free Press) portal as saying that de-oligarchisation process is in fact the replacement of "national bourgeoisie by comprador bourgeoisie."
No effective struggle against the oligarchs is anywhere in sight, Georgy Chizhov, an expert at the political technologies centre, has told TASS.
"Poroshenko himself is an oligarch, although he claims he has been doing his best to sell up the assets he owns. No systemic control of the oligarchs has been established and most of them feel themselves rather comfortably. The authorities have no understanding of how to go about the business of dismantling the oligarchic system. It should be born in mind that oligarchic structures are behind many social affairs - wages, jobs, and the enterprises that support mono-industrial towns. That’s the reason why they have to co-exist for the time being.
The oligarchs will be unable to spark another "Maidan", understood as a major, nation-wide protest, Chizhov believes. They are more likely to arrange for media campaigns. He believes that the oligarchs will be pressing for the dismissal of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and their attempt may prove successful, given the catastrophic slump of the current government’s popularity ratings. The oligarchs will be waging a war of political annihilation.
The oligarchs lack the resources to arrange for another "Maidan," says the director of the Political Studies Centre, Sergey Markov. "It would be a government coup arranged by US special services," Markov told TASS. "In the meantime, Poroshenko quite suits the US secret services, so they will keep him in place."
TASS may not share the opinions of its contributors