Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine
Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine [Кабінет міністрів України; Kabinet ministriv Ukrainy]. Apex of the executive branch of government, described in the 1996 Constitution of Ukraine (art 113) as accountable to both the President and the Supreme Council of Ukraine or parliament. It consists of the Prime Minister, a First Vice-Prime Minister, three Vice-Prime Ministers, and an unspecified number of ministers. The Prime Minister’s appointment by the President must be approved by the Supreme Council. Makeup of the Cabinet is in the hands of the Prime Minister, subject to presidential approval. The Prime Minister directs the work of the Cabinet and, within limits imposed by the budget, may create, abolish or reorganize ministries so long as the President is informed (art 114).
Whenever a new President is elected, the Cabinet must resign, as it must if it receives a vote of non-confidence from the Supreme Council of Ukraine. Individual ministers may, of course, resign at any time, but the resignation of the Prime Minister or his dismissal by the President entails the entire Cabinet’s resignation (art 115).
The Cabinet is constitutionally responsible for the country’s economic development, administration of state-owned enterprises, and drafting and executing the budget (art 116). It is empowered to issue over the Prime Minister’s signature its own regulations and decrees. Members of Cabinet are forbidden from simultaneously holding any remunerative position other than in teaching, scientific research, or the arts.
Despite its designation, this body is not analogous with its namesake in Westminster-style parliamentary democracies, either in authority or function. This Cabinet does not determine or direct policy, has no doctrine of collective responsibility, and individual ministers do not even direct their own departments but are instead directed by them. Ministers were initially predominantly drawn from the bureaucracy instead of being political appointees; in the circumstances, they were appendages of the bureaucracy and not its political masters. Only in January 2002 did the Supreme Council of Ukraine pass a law which classified cabinet ministers as politicians rather than civil servants, no longer eligible for bureaucratic pensions and privileges. Furthermore, the work of ministries is coordinated by the Cabinet of Ministers’ administrative apparatus which is run by the powerful Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers, a kind of prime ministerial deputy minister or ‘superbureaucrat.’ Consequently, the initiation and coordination of reforms, whether political or economic, by this body was never even a remote possibility.
At the close of the Soviet era, this body was termed the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, and it was nominally appointed by and accountable to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. In fact, both the appointment and accountability were a façade, because the personnel of the Council of Ministers were managed through the nomenklatura of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine which designated, moved, and removed ministers unilaterally according to the party’s established patronage practices. The Council of Ministers was a purely administrative body running the government of the Ukrainian SSR and taking direction from the Politburo.
A change in the nature of this body’s relationship to other political institutions began with the first semi-free and semi-competitive elections in the spring of 1990. Following these elections the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR re-appointed Vitalii Masol as Chairman of the Council of Ministers and accepted his nominees for positions in the Council. They included Oleksandr Tkachenko as one of two First Deputy Chairmen, Vitold Fokin and Kostiantyn Masyk as Deputy Chairmen, and Anatolii Zlenko as Foreign Minister. Most of the appointees were either incumbents or subordinates of the incumbents, a pattern repeated under the next two Prime Ministers, Yevhen Marchuk and Pavlo Lazarenko.
In the spring of 1991, Vitalii Masol’s replacement, Vitold Fokin, proposed changing the name of the Council of Ministers to Cabinet of Ministers, reorganizing it for greater capability in strategic and policy direction, and making it less of a command structure. Approved by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, the Cabinet was reduced in size from 45 to 32, including a Prime Minister (Premier), two Vice-Premiers, a Secretary of State, Ministers of State to coordinate policy in eight broad areas, and 20 ministers. The new Cabinet retained Kostiantyn Masyk as First Vice-Premier, Oleksandr Tkachenko as a Minister of State, and Anatolii Zlenko as Foreign Minister, but brought in Volodymyr Lanovy and Yevhen Marchuk as Ministers of State (for property and entrepreneurship, and for defense and emergencies, respectively). This initiative proved to be a high point in the modernization of Ukraine’s executive branch. Oddly, it was introduced before, and undone after, the 1991 Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence. The new Cabinet was confirmed by the Supreme Soviet in June 1991, but not without several (8 out of 33) rejections, in itself unprecedented.
Another reorganization of government was ordered in February 1992. Leonid Kravchuk’s presidential decree abolished the Ministers of State, reassigned the displaced ministers, and established a State Duma advisory to the President. Apparently designed to shift political direction towards the President and to restore Cabinet to its purely administrative function, this was confirmed in April with the abolition of Cabinet’s newly created policy advisory bodies. The Secretary of State, Volodymyr Piekhota, was made Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers. In May 1992, the 32-member Cabinet included: Vitold Fokin as Prime Minister; Kostiantyn Masyk as First Vice-Prime Minister; Volodymyr Lanovy as one of three Vice-Prime Ministers; and Petro Talanchuk (rejected by parliament in June 1991) as Education Minister.
With the resignation of Vitold Fokin in October 1992, Leonid Kuchma became Prime Minister presiding over a 31-man Cabinet. Included were six Vice-Prime Ministers each responsible for an area of policy like the defunct Ministers of State, among them Viktor Pynzenyk for economic reform.
The Cabinet assembled by President Leonid Kravchuk in September 1993 under Yukhym Zviahilsky as Acting Prime Minister had 34 members, with the highest level of continuity since 1990 in spite of the country’s critical situation. A cabinet shuffle, including the resignation of Zviahilsky and his replacement by Vitalii Masol, took place just before the 1994 presidential election. Among the changes was the promotion of Yevhen Marchuk to Vice-Prime Minister. The new President, Leonid Kuchma, however, made minimal changes, namely, replacing Ivan Dotsenko as Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers (appointed in September 1993) with his crony Valerii Pustovoitenko, and Anatolii Zlenko with Hennadii Udovenko as Foreign Minister.
In the several Cabinets formed during Leonid Kuchma’s first term, there was a very gradual winnowing out of ministers from the Leonid Kravchuk presidency. Thus, in May 1995, there were still 22 of 33; in January 1996, 13 of 35; and only by August 1997, three of 26. President Kuchma, in fact, retained Vitalii Masol as Prime Minister until the latter’s retirement in March 1995, when Yevhen Marchuk was promoted into that position. Marchuk was dismissed in May 1996, and replaced by Pavlo Lazarenko, who in turn was forced to resign in July 1997, whereupon Valerii Pustovoitenko became Prime Minister. The carousel of Prime Ministers was a result of the President’s inability to control their activities, his shifting of blame in their direction deflecting it from himself, and the ongoing lack of clarity about his and their respective powers.
A presidential decree issued at the end of 1996 specified a 34-member Cabinet composed of Prime Minister, a First Vice-Prime Minister, three Vice-Prime Ministers, and 29 ministers. Throughout President Kuchma’s first term, there were numerous reorganizations and restructurings, with ministries being created out of or broken up into state committees. By March 1999, there were officially only 18 ministries, the reduction seemingly a response to the International Monetary Fund’s demand for administrative reform.
After his re-election in 1999, President Leonid Kuchma proposed for Prime Minister the reappointment of Valerii Pustovoitenko, but this was rejected by parliament, and Viktor Yushchenko, Head of the National Bank of Ukraine, was appointed instead.
Following the eruption of the Heorhii Gongadze scandal in November 2000, Viktor Yushchenko lost the confidence of the Supreme Council of Ukraine on 26 April, and was replaced on 29 May 2001 by Anatolii Kinakh, a prominent industrialist, one-time presidential adviser, and former vice-prime minister. Kinakh’s Cabinet, however, was virtually identical to that of his predecessor. The major changes were: Oleh Dubyna, promoted to First Vice-Prime Minister; Volodymyr Semynozhenko, and Leonid Kozachenko, appointed Vice-Prime Ministers for Humanitarian Matters and for Agricultural Reform, respectively; Yurii Bohutsky, made Minister of Culture and the Arts; Vasyl Hureiev, named to the restored portfolio of Minister of Industrial Policy; former Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko as Transport Minister; and Serhii Kurykin appointed Ecology Minister. Fourteen of 20 ministers had served in the Yushchenko Cabinet; only two individuals had never been cabinet ministers before. In Ukraine, prime ministers and cabinets change independently of one another.
Following the March 2002 parliamentary elections there was no immediate change of government, but on 16 November President Leonid Kuchma dismissed Anatolii Kinakh and replaced him with Viktor Yanukovych.
In an apparent attempt to streamline the structure and operation of the Cabinet of Ministers, Viktor Yanukovych issued in December 2002 and January 2003 a series of instructions designating specific functional responsibilities to the prime minister and vice-prime ministers, assigning them to the chairmanships of various advisory bodies, and abolishing about two dozen others. Henceforth, Prime Minister Yanukovych would in particular preside over four committees dealing with technological development, investment, the famine, and privatization. This housecleaning gave some indication of the introduction of rational principles of organization into the work of the cabinet.
In March 2003 and March 2004, the Supreme Council of Ukraine approved the government’s action program, each time insulating it from being ousted by a want-of-confidence motion for one year thereafter. In May 2004, Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers contained only two ministers (Vasyl Kremen and Viacheslav Kyrylenko) who had been in Viktor Yushchenko’s cabinet four years earlier. Renewal had at long last triumphed over continuity, insofar as it may have been a harbinger of change.
In the wake of the Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko became President and named Yuliia Tymoshenko as his Prime Minister. Her Cabinet of Ministers contained three Vice-Prime Ministers (Oleh Rybachuk, Mykola Tomenko, and Roman Bezsmertny), retained Anatolii Kinakh as First Vice-Prime Minister, and consisted of seventeen ministers, none from the previous Cabinet. This wholesale turnover was somewhat compensated for by the fact that some of its members belonged to her Yuliia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) electoral alliance, successor to Batkivshchyna party represented in the Leonid Kuchma-era Cabinets of Viktor Yushchenko and Anatolii Kinakh. Less than a year later, Tymoshenko was replaced as Prime Minister by Yurii Yekhanurov, who eleven months later was replaced by the president’s nemesis, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych’s second Cabinet was expanded to include five Vice-Prime Ministers, Mykola Azarov as First Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, and nineteen ministers only three of whom were holdovers. The political complexion of Cabinet changed from being members of Our Ukraine and BYut under Tymoshenko to Party of Regions, the Communist Party of Ukraine, and the Socialist Party of Ukraine under Yanukovych, a total transformation. Tymoshenko returned to the prime ministership in December 2007, her Cabinet consisting of Oleksandr Turchynov as First Vice-Prime Minister, two Vice-Prime Ministers (Ivan Vasiunykh and Hryhorii Nemyria), and 21 ministers (with Yekhanurov as Minister of Defence) of whom only two had survived from her first government (Yurii Lutsenko and Yurii Pavlenko).
On winning the presidency in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych dismissed Yuliia Tymoshenko and appointed Mykola Azarov as Prime Minister. His Cabinet of Ministers, drawn mainly from the Party of Regions, the Volodymyr Lytvyn Bloc, and the Socialist Party of Ukraine, consisted of two First Vice-Prime Ministers (Andrii Kliuiev and Valerii Khoroshkovsky), seven Vice-Prime Ministers, and 22 ministers. In 2012, a second Azarov government was formed, with Serhii Arbuzov as First Vice-Prime Minister and three Vice-Prime Ministers; of these top four, only one (Yurii Boiko) had been in the previous Cabinet. There were 18 ministers, twelve of them newcomers. Most were from the Party of Regions.
In the wake of the Euromaidan Revolution, when Viktor Yanukovych abandoned his post and fled to the Russian Federation, Oleksandr Turchynov as Speaker of the Supreme Council of Ukraine became acting president while the prime ministership fell to Arsenii Yatseniuk. Yatseniuk’s Cabinet was drawn mainly from leading members of Yuliia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party as well as prominent participants in the Revolution of Dignity. It was comprised of ex-Kyiv police chief Vitalii Yaremko as First Vice-Prime Minister together with seventeen ministers of whom only three had served in previous governments. In the wake of the October elections to the Supreme Council, another government under Yatseniuk was formed in December 2014. It contained three new Vice-Prime Ministers and 16 ministers, eleven of them newcomers. Appropriately enough, the Cabinet now mainly represented the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, Yatseniuk’s Popular Front, Self-Reliance, and the Radical Party of Oleh Liashko.
President Petro Poroshenko at last ousted Arsenii Yatseniuk as Prime Minister in April 2016, replacing him with Volodymyr Groisman, who had served in Yatseniuk’s first Cabinet as Vice-Prime Minister. The Groisman Cabinet, made up of representatives of Poroshenko’s ‘Solidarity’ Bloc and the Popular Front Party, consisted of Stepan Kubic as First Vice-Prime Minister, four Vice-Prime Ministers (two of them new), and 18 ministers, 12 being newcomers.
Volodymyr Groisman’s Cabinet was replaced on 29 August 2019 by that of Oleksii Honcharuk following the unprecedented majority victory in the elections to the Supreme Council of Ukraine by the Servant of the People Party. Honcharuk’s Cabinet contained only two carryovers from that of Groisman—Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Finance Minister Oksana Markarova. Honcharuk himself as the youngest Prime Minister ever in Ukraine’s history, together with his Cabinet, however, had the shortest term of office on record—six months. President Volodymyr Zelensky abruptly replaced them with the relatively unknown Denys Shmyhal and 17 ministers, six of them holdovers. By its composition the Shmyhal Cabinet appeared to promise greater stability and less of a threat to entrenched interests than the fresh and untested team of Honcharuk. By way of cost-cutting necessitated by the wartime situation during the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Ukrainian Prime Minister in March 2024 announced a forthcoming reduction in the number of ministers by about one third.
Wedged between the President and the Supreme Council of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Ministers with the Prime Minister at its head has yet to achieve a stable position within the constitutional framework. In Ukraine’s semi-presidential system the emphasis has shifted from president-parliamentary beginning in 1996, to parliamentary-presidential from 2006, back to president-parliamentary beginning in 2010, and reverting to parliamentary-presidential in 2014. Presently, according to the Constitution of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Minister is answerable to the President and the Supreme Council of Ukraine, but also subordinate and accountable to the Supreme Council. The President was empowered to name a Prime Minister on a proposal from the ruling parliamentary majority. Other ministers were appointed by the Council of Ministers on nomination by the Prime Minister, who directed the Council of Ministers in the execution of its own program as approved by the Supreme Council. These formal provisions, as past practice has shown, could nevertheless be overridden by informal practices on the part of the President. Ideally, a premier-presidential or even fully parliamentary system as adopted in most European post-Communist states would work best to assure democratic accountability and political stability for Ukraine.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wise, C.; Pigenko, V. ‘The Separation of Powers Puzzle in Ukraine: Sorting Out Responsibilities and Relationships between President, Parliament, and the Prime Minister,’ in State and Institution Building in Ukraine, ed. T. Kuzio, R. Kravchuk, and P. D’Anieri (New York 1999)
Sydorchuk, O. ‘The Impact of Semi-Presidentialism on Democratic Consolidation in Poland and Ukraine,’ Demokratizatsiya, 22, no. 1 (Winter 2014)
Fisun, O. ‘Ukrainian Constitutional Politics,’ in Beyond the Euromaidan: Comparative Perspectives on Advancing Reform in Ukraine, ed. H. Hale and R. Orttung (Stanford, California 2016)
Lytvyn, V. ‘Retrospectives and Perspectives on the Choice of System of Government in the History of Ukrainian Statehood,’ Annales Scientia Politica, 11, no. 2 (2022)
Bohdan Harasymiw
[This article was written in 2024.]