"Terrifying financial gap": Koretskyi shocked authorities with data on Ukraine’s money

"Terrifying financial gap": Koretskyi shocked authorities with data on Ukraine’s money

The new Prime Minister of Ukraine, Serhiy Koretskyi, is not trying to build warm personal relationships with people’s deputies and does not embellish data on the real financial situation in the country.

This was reported on Thursday, September 3, by Ukrainska Pravda (UP) in an extensive article “The Triangle of Confusion, or the Cabinet, OP and the Rada in the New Political Season”.

According to the publication’s sources in Servant of the People, after his appointment Koretskyi began actively assessing, in particular, what resources were at his disposal and what needs he had to address. According to UP’s sources, he was “quite shocked.”

“Moreover, Koretskyi did not hide his shock and, without any particular courtesies, began laying out the truth to our deputies. They are not used to it; the last time someone scared them like that was [Oleksiy] Honcharuk (former prime minister — ed.) at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic,” one of the “servants” told UP.

Throughout August, Koretskyi held meetings at the Office of the President and in the Verkhovna Rada, presenting tables and graphs. The author of the article notes that many MPs were left with “unforgettable impressions” from these meetings.

He also prepared a presentation for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The slides showed a “terrifying financial gap” between Ukraine’s available resources and the expenditures the state must finance by the end of the year. According to UP, it amounted to tens of billions of dollars.

Former Prime Minister Yuliya Svyrydenko tried to explain complex financial problems to interlocutors as gently as possible, avoiding unnecessary tension. Koretskyi’s presentation came as a real cold shower for many government officials, UP writes.

The new prime minister focused on showing the scale of the problems and securing constructive engagement from the Verkhovna Rada. He actively urged deputies to support European integration and other laws whose implementation is tied to international financing.

For its part, the Rada put some of them to a vote on September 1, but that same day almost all of them failed.

This course of events may become for Koretskyi an experience and his first tough lesson in public administration on an intensive course, the author of the article concludes.