Key Ukrainian ministers may be fired

PanARMENIAN.Net - Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych may fire up to five key ministers next week over allegations of inefficiency, a Ukrainian weekly said.

A government source told the Zerkalo nedeli. Ukraina weekly there was a “heightened degree of anxiety” in the cabinet after Yanukovych’s chief of staff, Serhiy Lyovochkin, accused the country’s ministers of not doing enough to act on the president’s instructions.

Only a third of them ever get to be implemented, Lyovochkin told a reform committee earlier this month.

The paper said Defense Minister Mykhaylo Yezhel, Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk, Culture Minister Mykhaylo Kulynyaka, Health Minister Oleksandr Anischenko, and Finance Minister Fedir Yaroshenko may all be sacked when Yanukovych attends a cabinet meeting on November 2.

Speaking to Radio Liberty earlier this month, Yanukovych’s spokesman said the president was concerned about the cabinet’s work but had “no personal prejudice against individual ministers,” RIA Novosti reported.