After the Jan. 3 meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing,” at the level of national security advisers, Ukraine’s acting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was much more forthcoming about his attempt to consolidate power in his latest removals, reshuffling and appointments—what Zelenskyy terms “rotations.” He explained:
“We are in the program of a major reset that I spoke about some time ago. We started with the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine; not everything has been reset there yet, and there will be some changes concerning the ministries.... As for the entire security sector, the entire law enforcement system, I will personally be dealing with rotations of absolutely all leaders…. Next, after the defense sector has been reset, I will move on to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
Yet, he then let slip in his self-contradictory statements that in the “rotation,” some people he no longer wants will be dumped: “I think everyone will remain in various high-level positions, but there will also be replacements.” And there’s the rub—while Zelenskyy has done reshuffling multiple times before, sort of a cosmetic rearranging of Titanic’s deck chairs, usually timed with his latest political crisis, apparently, now he means to consolidate even more power in his hands, as both the military situation and the corruption scandal collapses around him.
