“The Sword Meets the Plough: Why Did Bankova Establish the Ministry of National Unity?”

The true purpose behind the creation of the Ministry of Unity was to mobilize voters abroad and allocate budget funds. However, following a corruption scandal, Bankova moved to quietly shut down the ministry — while the government itself has effectively become an extension of the President’s Office, resembling a modern-day “Union of the Sword and the Plough.”

This opinion was expressed on the air of “Pryamyi” by political scientist Volodymyr Tsybulko.

“They still hoped to control millions of votes from Ukrainians abroad for electoral purposes. That’s why they set up such a network of representative offices — they were looking for a mechanism for parallel mobilization. The idea was to open a foreign branch of the ministry in a given country, which would oversee the local Ukrainian community with the eventual aim of establishing a polling station,” Tsybulko noted.

However, according to him, once the timing of the elections became “entirely uncertain” and a criminal case was opened against Unity Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, Bankova moved to quietly shut down the ministry’s operations.

“Chernyshov was not appointed by chance. He was intended to be a key figure in Zelenskyy’s electoral strategy. Certain financial resources were meant to be channelled to secure votes — especially from Ukrainian refugees abroad. But neither objective was achieved. They overestimated their capabilities,” the political analyst explained.

Overall, in his view, the current Cabinet of Ministers has long since lost its independence and is now directly controlled by Bankova Street — effectively turning into a modern-day version of Ostap Bender’s ‘Union of the Sword and the Plough’.

“In essence, today’s Cabinet simply executes instructions from Bankova. Yet it was meant to be an independent body, guided by the position of the parliamentary majority. But there is no formalized majority. There’s only voting. And let me remind you — for the past two years, not a single bill has passed with votes from ‘Servant of the People’ alone, even though they claim to hold a mono-majority. Instead, votes are gathered from oligarchic parliamentary groups — and those votes are, in one way or another, paid for,” the studio guest added.

“That’s why we now have this ‘Union of the Sword and the Plough’, which has completely distorted the Constitution. Government reports to parliament have become a farce. Ministers sit there smirking, pretending to answer questions from MPs. For instance, there was a day when Chernyshov, Umerov, and another minister were all being questioned — yet none of them showed up. That’s three ministers ignoring Government Day. They know everything has been turned on its head. It’s no longer ministers answering to parliament — it’s ministers instructing MPs on how to vote. That, in a nutshell, is the mindset of today’s government,” political analyst Volodymyr Tsybulko concluded.

As a reminder, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office conducted searches at the residence of the current Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov. Subsequently, the NABU and the SAP informed him of suspicion of abuse of office and obtaining illegal benefits.

As the investigation established, officials of the Ministry of Regional Development under the leadership of Chernyshov created conditions for Kopystyra to obtain a land plot in Kyiv for the construction of a residential complex in 2021-2022. The land was valued almost five times cheaper than the market value, which could have caused losses to the state of more than UAH 1 billion.

On June 27, the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court chose a preventive measure for the official. At the same time, in the scandalous corruption case of a billion hryvnias, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov who is called one of President Zelensky’s closest associates, is being asked for bail of 120 million hryvnias without restriction of liberty. Meanwhile, former employees of the Probation Service, from whom false testimony against Petro Poroshenko is being demanded, were imprisoned in a pre-trial detention center with a total bail of 1.2 billion hryvnias – although they did not cause any damage to the state.

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