Prague, June 4 (CTK) – Ukrainian diplomacy has only slowly been getting rid itself of people nominated under ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, Lubos Palata writes in Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) Saturday and adds that one of them is the ambassador to Slovakia who was dismissed over a cigarette smuggling scandal.
The ambassador, Oleh Havasi, shortly followed ambassador to the Czech Republic Borys Zaychuk who had to leave in March after his participation in the case of Lebanese arms trader Ali Fayad was exposed, Palata writes.
He writes that Fayad owned a Ukrainian passport, was an adviser to Yanukovych and was involved in the exports of Ukrainian arms, Palata writes.
In addition, Zaychuk was allegedly incompetent. “If Ukraine did not have an embassy in Prague, but only a consulate, it would be the same,” a source from Kiev diplomacy has told the daily Ukrayinska Pravda, Palata writes.
He writes that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, a trained physicist who speaks four world languages, proved hisemlf as a deputy for European integration and later as the ambassador to Germany.
The spontaneous Klimkin, who is capable of talking to journalists in the style of Western politicians, is almost a complete opposite of some Ukrainian ambassadors who seem to have got stuck in communism.
Most of them were rewarded with the ambassadorial posts during the reign of Yanukovych. Many of them who accurately copied the image of “a former apparatchik”, or a former Soviet official, were assigned to important European countries. The Czech Republic was one of the afflicted ones.
The ambassador to Bratislava, Havasi, was a similar type of man. He was dismissed yesterday after his wife attempted to bring in Slovakia 60,000 packets of unstamped cigarettes in a diplomatic van a couple of days ago, Palata writes.
Fortunately, Ukraine also has another type of diplomats in Central Europe. In Poland, the post is held by the excellent former foreign minister, Andriy Deshchytsia, a star of the Warsaw diplomatic corps, Palata writes.
Budapest has the Hungarian-speaking Liubov Nepop, who headed the Ukrainian mission to Belgium, Palata writes.
