Ukraine will dismiss Kostiantyn Kulyk for skipping a mandatory exam required for all employees of the General Prosecutor’s Office.
That’s according to a source who spoke to Reuters.
Kulyk did not show for the test, and didn’t bother to explain why. Failure to file an official justification is grounds for dismissal.
Why should anyone care about this? Well, it’s quite simple actually. Kulyk was one of the primary sources used by John Solomon for a serious of dubious columns published in The Hill earlier this year, columns which are cited in the whistle-blower complaint at the heart of the Trump impeachment inquiry.
“Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Prosecutor General’s International Legal Cooperation Department, told me he and other senior law enforcement officials tried unsuccessfully since last year to get visas from the US Embassy in Kiev to deliver their evidence to Washington”, Solomon wrote in April.
A pair of sources who spoke to Reuters said that Kulyk put together a half-dozen pages for a dossier documenting the business activities of Hunter Biden in Ukraine. Although that hasn’t been verified, one imagines it strikes a similar tone to that which found its way into conservative propaganda this year thanks in part to Solomon’s “articles” (and the scare quotes are there for a reason).
Kulyk met with Rudy Giuliani who says he “was another prosecutor somewhat lower level who told me… there was collusion and Biden had (the) prosecutor fired to kill case on (his) son and Burisma”.
“The prosecutor” refers to Viktor Shokin, who Giuliani attempted to secure a visa for earlier this year, against the recommendation of the State department.
“Mayor Giuliani was calling the White House as well as the Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, saying that I was blocking the visa for Mr. Shokin, and that Mr. Shokin was coming to meet him and provide information about corruption at the embassy, including my corruption”, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch told lawmakers last month, according to the transcript of her testimony released by Adam Schiff on Monday.
“A source close to [Burisma] saw a spike in activity by Kulyk… after Giuliani’s interest in the company and the Bidens had been conveyed to Kulyk’s then superior, Yuri Lutsenko”, Reuters says. Lutsenko’s story has changed in recent months as Democrats began to untangle the Christmas lights.
“Basically, it was people in the Ukrainian Government who said that Mr. Lutsenko, the former prosecutor general, was in communication with Mayor Giuliani, and that they had plans, and that they were going to, you know, do things, including to me”, Yovanovitch testified.
Now you can see why it’s notable that Kulyk is apparently on the verge of being relieved of his duties.
Reuters goes on to note that prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka has “already fired more than 400 prosecutors”.
And while some say “many of those sacked had refused to sit the exam in protest at what they see as a purge designed to cement new President Volodymyr Zelensky’s political control of the service”, Zelensky himself says the purge is necessary “because the office is widely distrusted by Ukrainians and had been seen as a political tool for the well-connected to punish their enemies”.
Sound familiar?
