Selenskyj suggested dismissal
Ukraine Minister of Culture resigns after criticism
07/21/2023 10:48 am
Budget funds must be used properly, says Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. What exactly that means was controversial in his government. Culture Minister Tkatschenko has now vacated his post after criticizing a planned million-euro investment in cultural projects.
Ukraine’s Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko has resigned over controversial funding of cultural projects during Russia’s war of aggression. “I presented my resignation to the Prime Minister tonight as there is a wave of misunderstandings about the importance of culture in wartime,” Tkachenko wrote on Facebook. Previously, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had asked Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal to consider replacing Tkachenko.
On Thursday, the Ukrainian news website “Ukrainska Pravda” published a report according to which the Ministry of Culture is said to have decided to provide the equivalent of almost eleven million euros for the production of a TV series. Tkachenko himself said in a recent radio show that it was appropriate to mobilize around 12 million euros to complete a museum dedicated to the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s.
Kiev sees the “Holodomor” (German: murder by hunger) as a deliberate genocide by the leadership of the Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin. The German Bundestag, several other European countries and the EU Parliament have endorsed the definition in recent months.
Culture Minister Tkachenko, who has now resigned, defended the spending plans, saying that during the war “both private and budgetary funds are no less important for culture than for drones.” Culture is “the protective shield of our identity and our borders”.
Zelenskyy, on the other hand, pointed out in his nightly speech on Thursday that the people of Ukraine should “feel that budget funds are being used fairly and properly”. This also applies to cultural institutions such as museums, cultural centers or TV series. Literally Zelenskyj said: “All this is important, but now there are other priorities.”