Poroshenko fired powerful tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky as a regional governor

Ukraine’s president fired powerful tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky as a regional governor on Wednesday in a risky move that could affect the internal balance of power and Kiev’s fight against Moscow-backed separatists.
The 52-year-old Kolomoisky has been at the center of a political storm since armed and masked men, apparently loyal to him, briefly entered the offices of the state-owned oil monopoly UkrTransNafta in the capital Kiev last Thursday night after its director, his ally, was summarily replaced.
As governor of the eastern industrial region Dnipropetrovsk region, Kolomoisky, a banking, energy and media tycoon with a fortune that Forbes put at $1.8 billion last year, has been a valuable ally to the Kiev government in arming and financing militia groups and volunteer battalions there to hold off pro-Russian separatists.
Commentators said dismissing Kolomoisky was a tough decision for Poroshenko who was under pressure from radical deputies to curb what they said was a dangerous power play in Ukraine’s capital city still gripped by political tension as an uneasy ceasefire holds in the east.
Russian officials have increasingly portrayed Poroshenko as weak and suggested he faces a major challenge trying to rein in the oligarchs, as well as what it calls the “party of war”.
A statement on Poroshenko’s website said the President had dismissed the hard-nosed, tough-talking mogul during a meeting on Tuesday after the oligarch had offered to step down.
Kolomoisky is, alone among the so-called oligarchs, credited with taking firm action against separatism in the east — successfully snuffing out rebel attempts to seize control of Dnipropetrovsk last year. As such, he has been a pivotal figure.
There was no immediate word from Kolomoisky’s camp on what his next step would be and whether his sacking as governor would affect his support for volunteer battalions that have fought alongside regular army in the east. The situation remains volatile with key cities such as Mariupol seen as under threat.
Some say Poroshenko may have been motivated reluctantly to take a tough line with Kolomoisky to demonstrate to the International Monetary Fund and other of Ukraine’s Western creditors that he was determined to clean up the chaotic loss-making state energy sector.
In a separate move partly intended to impress Ukraine’s creditors, two high-ranking state officials were detained in a glare of publicity at a televised government meeting in Kiev on Wednesday and accused of involvement in high-level corruption.
But by alienating Kolomoisky, a highly influential figure in a sensitive region, Poroshenko has taken a risky step as he seeks to win back the diplomatic initiative in the crisis with Russia over the separatist conflict, commentators said.
Some commentators suggest it could mark the start of an internal power struggle between Poroshenko and the powerful tycoon who has emerged from political upheaval and war in Ukraine to be the most dominant of the big business oligarchs controlling key parts of the economy.
In what most commentators took to be an indication of growing alarm over Kolomoisky’s funding of volunteer armed battalions, Poroshenko said on Monday he would not allow governors to run their own «pocket armies».
«Sacking Kolomoisky was the most difficult, but the truest, decision that Poroshenko has made in staffing policy,» said Serhiy Leshchenko, one of those deputies who had pressed for the President to take action against the recalcitrant oligarch.
And though Kolomoisky was not Poroshenko’s principal backer in his campaign for president last May, he is known to have the allegiance of about 15 deputies in Poroshenko’s political bloc in parliament, Ukrainian media say.
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